This one-day conference seeks to explore representations of the body as strange, shameful, wrong, impaired, wounded, scarred, disabled, lacking, different or ‘other’ in contemporary media.
The advent of digital media has underlined the importance of visual culture and our curiosity in representations of the body to form opinions about ourselves and others. Media portrayals of bodies can affect our lives because media are one of the primary agents of socialization (Moore and Kosut, 2010). Bodies we see in newspapers, on television and in our social media feeds are often made to appear perfect in order to conform to racialized and heteronormative ideals of what it means to be beautiful and normal in contemporary capitalist societies. Presentations of the body that are white, young, slim and productive have been critiqued from different fields in academia such as feminism, queer theory, disability studies, critical theory and postcolonial studies.
The digital media landscape is posing new challenges to the study of body representation. The Internet and social media in particular have led to an increased representation and engagement with the body through practices such as selfies, webcamming, blogging, vlogging and so on. While digital media may contribute to an empowerment of excluded and silenced bodies, they may equally open up spaces of discrimination, threats, hatred, trolling and silencing online.
A critical approach to representations of bodies and disability is therefore essential as a means of change (Bolt, 2014). This conference aims to develop a new understanding of disability and the media in the 21st century by establishing a dialogue between different scholars on the theme of body representations. In particular, we seek to formulate new questions to comprehend how the tension between non-digital and digital media is creating spaces for new ways of framing disabled bodies. How are new narratives being developed to recount diversity? What is their function? What is the relationship between representation of the body in news outlets and self-representation on social media? What are the epistemological opportunities the media could embrace in order to promote equality, health literacy and ultimately, a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be human?
Programme
09.00-09.30 Registration and Refreshments
09.30-09.35 Opening remarks: Diana Garrisi and Jacob Johanssen
09.40-11.00 Panel One: Prosthetics and Limbs
Emma Pullen, Carrie Hodges, Dan Jackson, Richard Scullion and Michael Silk (Bournemouth University): Representing para-bodies: The mediation between production and consumption in Paralympic broadcasting
Yana Reynolds (King’s College): ‘My Fake Leg is a Form of Power Dressing’: Amputee Bodies in Lifestyle Media
Helena Taubner (Halmstad University): “At least I can Walk” – Online Re-negotiation of Identity in Post-stroke Aphasia
Tomoko Tamari (Goldsmiths): Representations of Disability and the Prosthetic Body
11.00-11.20 Tea Break
11.20-12.40 Panel Two: Approaches and Debates
Colette Gilkes (University of Bristol): Nietzsche and the Social Model of Disability
Megan Bent (Independent Scholar): Vulnerable Strength: The Power of Self-Representation and Disclosure Through Art
Rachel Velody (University of Hertfordshire): Re-inscribing the Feminine in Breast Cancer
Alex Haagaard (OCAD University): ‘Spoonie’ Selfies: Dismantling the Medical-Scientific Hegemony of the Ill Body
12.40-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.30 Keynote
Professor Lisa Blackman (Goldsmiths): Loving the Alien: Bodies, Futures, Mediation
14.30-15.50 Panel Three: Femininities
Sarah Hill (University of Oxford Brookes): “Make-Up and Motivation”: Exploring Disabled Girls’ Self-Representation Practices Online
Alison Wilde (Leeds Beckett University): The Re-presentation and Self-representation of Disabled Womanhood in Britain’s Missing Top Model
Theodora Thomadakis (University of Roehampton): The emotional manifestation of the Naked ‘good’ and ‘bad’ postfeminist body in popular media: A psychoanalytic discussion
Nathalie Weidhase (University of Roehampton): “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no no no”: Amy Winehouse, Postfeminist Disorders and the Performance of the Abject Female Body
15.50-16.10 Break
16.10-16.40 Keynote: Changing Faces
Henrietta Spalding and Steve Taylor
16.40-17.40 Panel Four: Masculinities
Beccy Collings (University of East Anglia): The Modern Day ‘Wound Man’?: Professional Wrestling and Wound Culture
Jenna Pitchford-Hyde (University of East Anglia): Militarised Masculinity and Warrior Bodies: Representing Disabled Veterans of the Desert Wars in US and UK Media
Diego Semerene (Brown University): Tailoring the Phallus: The Sartorial Making and Re-Making of the Male Body from The Early Men’s Suit to Social Media’s Muscle Mania
17.40-18.00 Closing Remarks: Jacob Johanssen and Diana Garrisi
18.00 Drinks
Registration