Discussion on journal publishing tips and the challenges of research at the intersection of film studies and communications studies & Televisual Drag: Streaming Video and the Search for a Digital Audience
2023-04-05
Concordia University 1250 Guy Street | Room FB 630.17

Discussion on journal publishing tips and the challenges of research at the intersection of film studies and communications studies

In this informal discussion Dr. Punathambekar will offer MA and PhD students insight into the nuts and bolts of academic article publishing from his experience as editor of the storied and highly respected peer-reviewed journal Media, Culture and Society. We will also discuss the challenges and potentials of working at the intersection of film and communication studies.

Formal Lecture by Dr. Punathambekar on “Televisual Drag: Streaming Video and the Search for a Digital Audience”

Televisual Drag: Streaming Video and the Search for a Digital Audience
This talk develops the concept of “televisual drag” to situate streaming video platforms within the intermedial and expansive world of televisual screens, technologies, and cultural practices. Questioning the analytic primacy accorded to film within South Asian media studies, I argue that bringing television to the fore can reveal different temporalities, modalities, and logics for the evolution of screen media, both in their past forms and current constitution. At a moment when the academic study of media in South Asia and other non-Western contexts is moving beyond a film-centric focus to grapple with the proliferation of screens and sonic forms, I explore what television’s many avatars might reveal about global media histories and their emergence into the digital present. Using Disney+Hotstar as a case study, I show that our quest to understand digital video cultures rests as much on the still unfolding dynamics of cultural globalization and vernacularization that were set in motion during the late 1980s and early 1990s as it does the phenomenal expansion of digital infrastructures and platforms in the twenty-first century.

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