No culture is ‘low’ culture

One-day peer conference

Bangor University (Music Building)
Tuesday 16th April 2019, 9am-6pm

Culture which was traditionally excluded from academia has found its way into scholarship in recent years. Screen studies, media studies and popular culture are now considered by many to be legitimate lines of academic enquiry. However, students within these disciplines still have to fight against prejudice towards supposedly ‘low’ culture. Finding courses and postgraduate supervisors, securing funding for research, having conference papers received with interest and discussing projects with colleagues can all be challenging. Furthermore, the tendency of research into culture to be interdisciplinary creates further challenge, in that students are required to know and cite scholarship across a wider range of areas than they might have encountered prior to undertaking their projects. Traditional school and department structures at universities can make this difficult.

This conference brings together current students conducting research within the areas of screen and media studies and popular culture, giving them the opportunity to present and discuss their research with their peers, as well as more experienced academics. The papers will show that topics which are considered by some to be beneath scholarship can be studied rigorously and can contribute to academia.

Papers will deal with a wide range of popular culture topics, including film and television studies, music, gaming and gender studies.

All papers will be delivered by students.