please note the extension: POPULAR COMMUNICATION ICA PRECONFERENCE - BOSTON 2011 CALL FOR PAPERS Placing the Aesthetic in Popular Culture: Quality, Value, and Beauty in Communication and Scholarship Co-sponsored by the Popular Communication, Philosophy of Communication, and Visual Communication Divisions 26th May 2011 For many within the correlate fields of media, cultural, and communication studies, art, beauty, and aesthetics are highly problematic, heavily loaded terms. Critical theory posited the evaluative schemas on which such terms rely as discursively constructed and as frequently laden with culturally chauvinistic politics, and cultural studies in particular offered a firm rejection of the notion that the study of culture should begin with a favorable judgment of the text in question. Yet aesthetics never went away. Even if unaware, many scholars continued to select research projects based around judgments of a subject matter’s aesthetic prowess or poverty. More importantly, though, the discourse of aesthetics, quality, and beauty never went away for audiences and the media industries, as seen in discussions of “quality television,” for instance, or in the valorization of “independents” and “art house” production in film, in the debate regarding whether videogames are art that is currently heading to the US Supreme Court (with the future of videogame regulation hanging in the balance), or in the continuing denigration of aesthetic forms associated with marginal groups, such as certain forms of hip hop. The aesthetic in popular culture may even be at the center of significant cultural transformations associated with new media and the reconfiguration of existing mass media. For instance, do the commentary and rating options on popular Web 2.0 websites represent a democratization of aesthetic judgment, or even the creation of a participatory aesthetic “public sphere” based around open discussion, advice, and support? And to what extent are such developments paralleled (or exploited) by the rhetoric of natural talent and the apparent validation of audience opinion on TV shows like the Idol franchise? We in communication studies may not tackle aesthetics head on, but it is always there, whether as discourse, rumor, debate, or control mechanism. This one-day preconference will approach the place of aesthetics in popular communication studies. Treating it as a problematic, not as a given, the preconference will create room for vigorous debate about the actual and potential place of aesthetics in our scholarship. The point will not be to find yet more ways to romance the text, but to interrogate aesthetics and to advance popular communicative approaches to its observation and analysis. We will ask where one finds discussions of aesthetics and what they represent, but also consider possible ways that aesthetics might find its way into our scholarship in the future. Individual panels or contributions could address: The distinction between “quality” media and the mundane How aesthetics is tied to specific industrial imperatives and economic models The morality and ethics of aesthetics, and of studying aesthetics The political uses of aesthetics, and the politics of aesthetics Aesthetics’ relationship with the popular Singular vs. collaborative constructions of “authorship” Comparative contexts for the discussion of aesthetics across media Comparative contexts for the discussion of aesthetics globally How aesthetics are to be studied methodologically Format: The preconference will be designed to put discussion front and center. Panelists will be asked to circulate short two-page position papers beforehand, and will then have approximately five minutes each to introduce their ideas. Panelists will then be invited to discuss amongst each other, before opening the discussion, at the half-way point, to discussion with the room. Thus, while panelist spots will be limited, this format allows for the entire room to take part actively in the day’s proceedings. Call: We invite 500 word abstracts from those wishing to be panelists to be submitted to Jonathan Gray (jagray3@wisc.edu) by January 31, 2011. Panels will be assembled by the conference planning committee, with notification to follow in February, 2011. Remember that panelists will only have five minutes to introduce their ideas, and thus submissions should be tailored to the discursive format, not to monologic delivery.