Syndicate: Brus: Media-Culture Lis

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

From: "Axel Bruns" <mc@mailbox.uq.edu.au>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 17:19:52 +1000


   The Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland
                       <http://www.uq.edu.au/mcsc/>

                                    and

                   M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
                        <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/>

                    are proud to invite you to join the

                            Media-Culture List
             <http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/media-culture>

The Media-Culture List is finally here. If you're interested in
participating in debates that are at the nexus of various media forms and
their implications for contemporary culture, we would welcome your
presence. The Media-Culture List has emerged from the Media and Cultural
Studies Centre at the University of Queensland and the affiliated active
sites of the widely acclaimed online journal M/C - A Journal of Media and
Culture and its companion publication M/C Reviews. Our overall strategy is
to move ideas outward so that they are not closetted in the academic
specialisations that often consume and subsume those same ideas. We're
interested in critical thinking and ruminations on a variety of topics that
comfortably move between popular culture and critical thinking about those
same phenomena. Enlist, lurk and participate. And let the net of ideas
expand into the most interesting patterns generated by the Media-Culture
List. We're happy to see ideas form in the process of contribution and
crystallise in the list's exchange.

To begin the discussion, I would like to put the first idea out for
discussion:

How can we sensibly talk about the cultural phenomena of fads? Here, I am
thinking of the massive proliferation of paraphernalia commodities
connected to Pokemons. But similar washes of fads, crazes, frenzies are a
regular part of contemporary popular culture. They usually have a distinct
shelf-life; they are often connected and targetted at a particular age
group and gender. And even the term fad is pejorative. Is it useful to use
the social psychological language to describe these events? Is it useful to
think of the pleasure relationship that is contained in a massive activity?
Can we rethink the commodity form and its elasticity to contain and keep
producing these forms of pleasure?

                                                          P. David Marshall
                                Director, Media and Cultural Studies Centre
                   Supervising Editor, M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture


To participate in this and other discussions, link up with media and
culture enthusiasts and critics around the world, and get the latest news
about cultural and media events off- and online, join the Media-Culture
List by going to

             <http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/media-culture>

and following the instructions on screen. Subscription is simple and free,
and you'll be able to unsubscribe at any time.


About the Media and Cultural Studies Centre:

The University of Queensland's Media and Cultural Studies Centre is the
nerve centre of a number of activities, from research to teaching, from
publishing and production to conferences and colloquia. Cultural Studies
has long focussed on the media as an object of study for understanding
contemporary culture. The Media and Cultural Studies Centre is involved
specifically at that intersection, where media forms are critically
analysed through the interdisciplinary approaches derived from cultural
studies.

About M/C:

M/C is an award-winning journal that crosses over between the popular and
the academic. It is attempting to engage with the 'popular', and integrate
the work of 'scholarship' in media and cultural studies into our critical
work. We take seriously the need to move ideas outward, so that our
cultural debates may have some resonance with wider political and cultural
interests.


                                                     Axel Bruns

--
 M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture               mc@mailbox.uq.edu.au
 The University of Queensland                   http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/


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