[URBANTH-L]CFP: Brokering Images, Casting Differences (3/16/07;
AAA '07)
Zeynep Gursel
zgursel at berkeley.edu
Wed Feb 14 12:48:21 EST 2007
Call for Papers
Proposed Session
American Anthropological Association (AAA), Nov. 28-Dec. 2, 2007
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC
BROKERING IMAGES, CASTING DIFFERENCES:
Practices of Anticipating the Imagination of Others
Zeynep Devrim Gürsel, University of California,
Berkeley & Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, New York
University
We live in times of constant production and
consumption of images, incessantly being
represented, interpellated by images, and
engaging in acts of representing others. Yet in
whose image(s) are we being cast and who is doing
the casting? What constitutes knowledge
production in the visual realm and on what terms
do the stakes of visual production get
negotiated?
This panel broadly examines the production and
circulation of "images"-both as visual
representations of peoples and things as well as
the public perceptions sparked by them. Paying
specific attention to the practices of various
kinds of image brokers whose job it is to select,
edit, and arrange for the circulation of images
they themselves have not produced, the panel will
address the kinds of work enacted upon visual
representations that shape how they are framed
and intended to be taken up by a broader public.
Arguing that the temporal management of past
categories and future uses is a central feature
of image brokering, the panel will attend to the
specific practices of anticipation and
imagination used by image brokers in various
ethnographic locations. Focusing on the moments
of selection as critical sites to investigate the
decision-makers' imagination and the brokering of
images as an everyday practice of imagination,
the panel will explore the political potential of
these practices, including the role of stereotype
and innovation, or how particular images get
repeated and transformed.
We invite paper submissions to address these
issues through any of the following sets of
questions:
How do expectations of what something should
look like inform the selection of images?
What are the linguistic dimensions of these visual practices?
How are categories of peoples and things
produced in institutional settings through
everyday discursive interactions and visual
practices of image brokers?
How do image brokers put images to work? To what types of work are they put?
What kind of labor is image brokering?
What are the broader structural constraints of
image brokers' work and how does attention to
their everyday practices reveal something more
about these constraints?
How do we think about imagination in a context
where cultural producers anticipate the impact of
a particular image on a viewer's imagination?
How does the image broker's imagination and
his/her anticipation of the imagination of others
shape the ways in which both the past and future
get imaged?
Please send abstracts (250 words) for 15-minute
papers and a brief bio or cv to Stephanie
Sadre-Orafai, sso212 at nyu.edu, or Zeynep Devrim
Gürsel, zgursel at berkeley.edu by Friday, March 16,
2007.
--
Zeynep Devrim Gürsel
PhD. Candidate
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
(510) 642 2854
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