IAFOR > The European Conference on Arts & Humanities (ECAH) > ECAH2017

ECAH2017

The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 (ECAH2017) and The European Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2017 (EuroMedia2017). Photography by IAFOR Media. Image copyright © IAFOR 2017

The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 (ECAH2017) Conference Photograph. Photography by IAFOR Media. Image copyright © IAFOR 2017

Conference Theme: "History, Story, Narrative"

July 11 – July 12, 2017 | The Jurys Inn Brighton Waterfront, Brighton, UK

Historians are far from the only interested party in writing history. In a sense it is an interest we all share – whether we are talking politics, region, family birthright, or even personal experience. We are spectators to the process of history while being intimately situated within its impact and formations.

How, then, best to write it? Is it always the victor’s version? Have we not begun increasingly to write “history from below”, that lived by those who are not at the top of the power hierarchy? Are accounts of history always gender-inflected, hitherto, at least, towards men rather than women? Who gets to tell history if the issue is colonialism or class? How does geography, the power of place, intersect with history? What is the status of the personal story or narrative within the larger frame of events?

This conference addresses issues of writing history from literary and other discursive perspectives. That is to say: novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, travel logs and a variety of styles of essay. One thinks of Shakespeare’s history plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Shi Nai’an’s The Water Margin, Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine. It also addresses oral history, the spoken account or witness, the Hiroshima survivor to the modern Syrian migrant.

Which also connects to the nexus of media and history. The great “historical” films continue to hold us, be it Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1925) or Gone with the Wind (1940). We live in an age of documentaries, whether film or TV. There is a view that we also inhabit “instant” history, the download to laptop, the app, the all-purpose mobile. How has this technology changed our perception, our lived experience, of history? What is the role of commemoration, parade, holiday, festival or statuary in the writing of history?

The different modes by which we see and understand history, flow and counter-flow, nevertheless come back to certain basics.

One asks whether we deceive ourselves in always asking for some grand narrative. Can there only be one narrator or is history by necessity a colloquium, contested ground? Is national history a myth? And history-writing itself: is it actually a form of fiction, an artifice which flatters to deceive? What, exactly, is a historical fact?

Abstracts (2017)
Click to download as a PDF

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Programme

  • Doing Music Theory in a Post-Tonal, Post-Ideological World: Cultural Absorption and the Undoing of Cultural Hierarchies
    Doing Music Theory in a Post-Tonal, Post-Ideological World: Cultural Absorption and the Undoing of Cultural Hierarchies
    Spotlight Presentation: Linda Schwartz
  • Testimonies of Light: Photography, Witnessing and History
    Testimonies of Light: Photography, Witnessing and History
    Keynote Presentation: Paul Lowe
  • Re-Creating the Past: Fascist Comics and the Rehabilitation of History
    Re-Creating the Past: Fascist Comics and the Rehabilitation of History
    Spotlight Presentation: Alfonso J. García Osuna
  • The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award – 2017 Winners Announcement
    The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award – 2017 Winners Announcement
    Featured Event
  • The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
    The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
    Featured Panel Presentation: Donald E. Hall & Anne Boddington
  • Mythologizing One’s Own History Through Narrative: Francis Coppola’s Tetro
    Mythologizing One’s Own History Through Narrative: Francis Coppola’s Tetro
    Featured Presentation: Rodney F. Hill
  • Water Protectors or Protesters: Examining Media Coverage of the Dakota Pipeline Protests
    Water Protectors or Protesters: Examining Media Coverage of the Dakota Pipeline Protests
    Spotlight Presentation: Kimberly Cowden

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Speakers

  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    University of Brighton, UK
  • Amanda Bright
    Amanda Bright
    University of Brighton, UK
  • Kimberly Cowden
    Kimberly Cowden
    Colorado State University – Pueblo, USA
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Lehigh University, USA
  • Rodney F. Hill
    Rodney F. Hill
    Herbert School of Communication, Hofstra University, USA
  • Paul Lowe
    Paul Lowe
    London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK
  • Alfonso J. García Osuna
    Alfonso J. García Osuna
    Hofstra University, USA
  • Linda Schwartz
    Linda Schwartz
    Ambrose University, Canada

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Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    University of Brighton, UK
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Lehigh University, USA
  • James Rowlins
    James Rowlins
    Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
  • Gary E. Swanson
    Gary E. Swanson
    University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

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Review Committee

ECAH2017 Review Committee

  • Dr A W Brian De Silva, RMIT University, Australia
  • Dr Alexander Klemm, Webster University, Thailand
  • Professor Amany Ismail, Fine Arts Faculty, Alexandria University, Egypt
  • Dr Anna Hamling, UNB, Canada
  • Professor Iryna Morozova, Odesa Mechnikov National University, Ukraine
  • Dr Halia Koo, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
  • Dr Itishri Sarangi, Kiit University, India
  • Dr Janet Crosier, Springfield College, USA
  • Dr Lily Zamir, The David Yellin Academic College of Education, Israel
  • Dr Maria Figueredo, York University, Canada
  • Dr Marios Kostas, UCL Institute of Education, UK

EuroMedia2017 Review Committee

  • Dr Adem Ayten, Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey
  • Dr Alexander Klemm, Webster University, Thailand
  • Dr Alicja Fijalkowska, University of Warsaw, Poland
  • Professor Angeliki Monnier, University of Lorraine, France
  • Dr Jackie Raphael, Curtin University, Australia
  • Dr Lucyann Kerry, Middlesex University Dubai, UAE
  • Professor Melissa Lee Price, Zayed University, UAE
  • Dr Nihan Gider Isikman, Baskent University, Turkey
  • Dr Rasha El-Ibiary, Future University in Egypt, Egypt
  • Professor Rebecca Lind, University of Illinois at Chicago, United States
  • Dr Shulin Chiang, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the ECAH2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

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Doing Music Theory in a Post-Tonal, Post-Ideological World: Cultural Absorption and the Undoing of Cultural Hierarchies
Spotlight Presentation: Linda Schwartz

According to Terry Eagleton (2003), the Modernist turn (1910–1925) gave rise to the later period of cultural theory (1960s and 70s). Cultural theorists like Heidegger, Kristeva and Derrida lived in the present and wrote about the extremes of human experience (p. 70). Similarly, Arnold Schoenberg (modernist composer and theorist) expressed the limits of his experience through the exploration of radical social ideas in poetry, the inner psychology of the bizarre in painting, and the push to new frontiers in musical comprehension.

Unlike other creative arts theories where exploration of artist resistance to cultural norms persists, music theory is entrenched in acts of cultural preservation. Music scholars are committed to political ends that preserve musical tradition (classical and modernist) through rigorous analytical method (McClary, 1989), and this aligns with the overarching agendas of the institutions that support their work.

The twenty-first-century practice of cultural theory continues to exercise counter-cultural resistance, fragmenting metanarratives into discrete projects in the face of absorption by late capitalism. Music analysis, on the other hand, relies still on conceptualized notions of superstructure or reductive analytic technique which subsumes foreground (surface detail) into background.

Should twenty-first-century currents of music theory contribute to a more differentiated treatment of music analysis? Is there value for music analysts to hang about the edges in a non-committal way (Eagleton, p. 40), observing musical works and not giving in to notions of superstructure? How might theorists inscribe fresh hermeneutic insights on past repertories?

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

Testimonies of Light: Photography, Witnessing and History
Keynote Presentation: Paul Lowe

In its relatively short history, photography has arguably become the predominant medium through which we represent the world around us. It is hard to imagine a world without the photographic image, so ubiquitous has it become as a form of communication, documentation and personal and artistic expression. Today, more photographs are taken every two minutes than in the whole of the nineteenth century. We now photograph everything, every moment of our lives and the world around us. Photography has arguably become the means through which we most strongly remember the past – and represent the present – forming the foundation of not only our collective social memory, but also our personal memories. Photographs capture a moment in time and in space, condensing and concentrating experiences into artifacts. They preserve within the frame the ghostly traces of the past as well as the knowledge that that past is no longer there, and therefore serve to preserve our sense of history and memory. As such, they form an important part of remembering, fluctuating between past and present, connecting moments in time. This is not necessarily a “stilling” of time, but rather a concentration of experience into an image that suggests time interrupted, retaining the sense of a time before the image and a time after it. As soon as the shutter closes, that moment of representation is forever in the past, yet still preserved in the present and into the future. The paradox is that although the still image is a single, discrete temporal event, it has the ability to transcend time; by playing on the imagination of the viewer, it can project backward and forward through time. The image retains within the frame a self-contained story, a sense of occurrences before the photograph and possibilities afterward. This presentation will therefore explore how the photographic image has engaged with the historical moment, from its inception in the mid nineteenth century to the present day.

Image | View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827) by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

Re-Creating the Past: Fascist Comics and the Rehabilitation of History
Spotlight Presentation: Alfonso J. García Osuna

In his Theory of Mass Culture (1953), Dwight MacDonald proposes that popular culture is a tool for controlling the proletariat. This tool is forged at the highest levels of the power structure with the objective of adapting the individual’s conscience to the dominant ideology. With this paper I propose to throw some light upon the manner in which comics like the Italian Il Balilla and especially the Spanish Capitán Trueno, perhaps the most popular comics of their time, served to disseminate Fascist ideology throughout the lower classes and especially among the nations’ youth. And they did so by re-creating historical events, molding them to fit current ideological needs. I also wish to demonstrate how the differences between these two comics are the result of particular historical circumstances. In Il Balilla, a publication that reached its greatest popularity in the 1930s and early 1940s, the stories have to do with heroic deeds by contemporary Italian youth fighting for change, for the new order. Italy is expanding into Ethiopia/Abyssinia and then becomes a constituent of the Axis powers battling the Allies in the Second World War. Capitán Trueno, on the other hand, begins publication in the 1950s, a time when General Franco, with the help of Fascist groups like Falange Española, has already won a civil war. The Spanish hero is a “good” Fascist, but in a XII century setting. Change, the author seems to say, has already taken place in Spain: no need to incite Fascist passions in the present.

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award – 2017 Winners Announcement
Featured Event

The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award is an international photography award that seeks to promote and assist in the professional development of emerging documentary photographers and photojournalists.

The Award is supported by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) and builds off of the strength of the IAFOR Documentary Film Award, now in its sixth year. Documentary has a rich history of exposing truths, telling stories, raising awareness and creating discussion – all practices valued at IAFOR.

The Award follows the theme of the conference, with 2017’s theme being “History, Story, Narrative”. In support of upcoming talent, the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award is free to enter.

All delegates receive free entry to the award screening.

The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
Featured Panel Presentation: Donald E. Hall & Anne Boddington

Given the rise of anti-intellectualism and increasing emphasis on technical and skills-based education, 2017 and beyond will prove particularly challenging times for those of us working in the arts and humanities. Our panellists will each speak for five to ten minutes about the broad political constraints on their work, as well as their respective national and institutional contexts of funding and prioritisation. This will be followed by a general discussion with the audience about collective experiences and strategies for individual and collective response to the challenges that we face.

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

Mythologizing One’s Own History Through Narrative: Francis Coppola’s Tetro
Featured Presentation: Rodney F. Hill

Since 2007, Francis Coppola has been pursuing a more independent, low-budget mode of filmmaking, and the results have been some of the most personal films of his career. Tetro (2009), Coppola’s first film from an original screenplay since 1974, centres on the troubled relationships between two estranged brothers – both aspiring playwrights – and their brilliant but emotionally crippling father, a famous orchestra conductor. Key aspects of the narrative are drawn from Coppola’s own family history, but only loosely so, and in transposing these conflicts into fiction, Coppola symbolises them, indeed mythologises them, into a drama of Greek proportions. In its stylistic blend of realism and artifice, combined with its narrative focus on dramatic writing, the film calls attention to its own theatricality and process of narration.

Image | Francis Ford Coppola by FICG.mx

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

Water Protectors or Protesters: Examining Media Coverage of the Dakota Pipeline Protests
Spotlight Presentation: Kimberly Cowden

The Standing Rock Sioux reservation is located about an hour south of North Dakota’s capital city, Bismarck. The reservation extends into South Dakota. Since April of 2016, members of the Standing Rock Sioux nation have established a camp, the Sacred Stone Camp, to protest the Dakota Access pipeline project that will cross the Missouri river on tribal lands. What started out as a few “water protectors” bloomed into thousands of visitors showing support from every part of the globe, largely due to social media. This movement has illuminated the issues of water protection, our reliance on fossil fuels, environmental implications of carbon footprints, indigenous rights and the historical and present issues of treaty compliance and respect by the dominant culture for native peoples. The protests have created an international forum for indigenous rights and sovereignty. The purpose of this study is to examine print media coverage of the Standing Rock protests (also known as #NoDAPL) from the inception of the Sacred Stone camp, located on reservation lands in Cannonball, North Dakota, through November 2016. It is important to examine how mainstream media versus Native American media portrays the activists for dissemination. This study asks: in what ways does mainstream reporting differ from a Native American-centered media regarding coverage of the Dakota Pipeline protest.

Image | “Dakota Access Pipe Line” by Carl Wycoff

Read presenter biographies on the Speakers page.

Anne Boddington
University of Brighton, UK

Biography

Professor of Design Innovation and Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Anne Boddington was educated as an architect and cultural geographer. She has particular interests in the spaces of learning and research and the symbiosis of arts and humanities education as agents of cultural, social and civic transformation. The founding Head of the School of Architecture & Design (1999-2006) and since 2006, as Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities, she was also the Director of the University’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) (a unique partnership between the University, the V&A, the Royal College of Art and the RIBA) and co-director of the HEA’s Subject Centre in Art Design and Media.

A registered architect, fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), she has been an independent governor, trustee, chair and an elected member of many regional and national councils in the cultural sector and in higher education including as a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council Advisory Board (AHRC); Vice Chair of Council for Higher Education in Art& Design (CHEAD) and a trustee of the Design Council/CABE. Working with HEFCE she was a panel member of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) and Deputy Chair of D34 for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) panel in 2014 as well as a member of the REF 2014 Equality & Diversity Panel. Her research has been supported and funded by the EU, EPSRC, AHRC, the HEA and HEFCE. She has an international profile as a speaker and advisor for research development, quality assurance, enhancement and teaching innovation in Architecture, Art and Design across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She undertakes regular peer review and research assessment for academic journals and conferences and has worked with and for research councils of Portugal, Iceland, Austria, Germany, Israel and Canada.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Presentation information will be added here shortly

.

Past Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
Amanda Bright
University of Brighton, UK

Biography

Since 2016, Amanda Bright has been the Head of the School of Art at the University of Brighton, UK. Prior to this she was Associate Dean of Academic Development and Enhancement at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

She has extensive experience in academic development and quality assurance, and over the last 15 years has chaired and contributed to a wide range of Academic Reviews and Validations in the UK and overseas. Having worked as a Subject Specialist and Institutional Auditor for QAA, she currently works with the Hong Kong Council for the Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ), with whom she is a Specialist Reviewer.

Her subject background is in metalsmithing and the applied arts, and her passion for making, for materiality and for "learning by doing" continues.

Educated at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, London, from where she graduated in 1987, she, specialised in patination and in the material properties of metal, particularly ferrous metals. In 1988, as part of the bi-centennial celebrations in Australia, she was invited to Canberra School of Art to represent the UK in a Metalsmith’s masterclass, and ten years later, in the catalogue accompanying the major metalwork exhibition "Metalmorphosis", at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, (November 1998 to February 1999) was described as "one of the most original and influential metalwork artists of her generation".

Her work has been purchased for a number of national collections in the UK, including the Crafts Council, Contemporary Arts Society, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, South East Arts Craft Collection, Ulster Museum, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Her work has been exhibited widely nationally at venues including: the V&A, London; the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Galerie für Angewandte Kunst, Munich; Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway; Dutch Textile Museum (DTM), Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
Kimberly Cowden
Colorado State University – Pueblo, USA

Biography

Dr Kimberly Cowden is an assistant professor in the Department of Mass Communication and Center for New Media at Colorado State University – Pueblo, USA. Dr Cowden specialises in public relations, crisis communication, health communication and conducting research with underserved populations. Her work has been published in the Journal of Business Communication, Communication, Culture and Critique, and the Journal of Indigenous Research. She is the author of a chapter in the spring 2017 edited book Crisis Communication Cases.

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | Water Protectors or Protesters: Examining Media Coverage of the Dakota Pipeline Protests
Donald E. Hall
Lehigh University, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Prior to arriving at Lehigh in 2011, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University (WVU). Before his tenure at WVU, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was 2001 Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, for 2004-05, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki for 2006. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He has served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. In 2013, he was elected to and began serving on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and ethical intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. His book, The Academic Community: A Manual For Change, was published by Ohio State University Press in the fall of 2007. His tenth book, Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies, was published in the spring of 2009. In 2012, he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, collaborated on a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, which was published in July of that year. He continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
Rodney F. Hill
Herbert School of Communication, Hofstra University, USA

Biography

Rodney F. Hill, Associate Professor of Film in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, holds a PhD from the University of Kansas and an MA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA. He is co-author of The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick, co-editor of Francis Ford Coppola: Interviews, and a contributor to several other books, including The Essential Science-Fiction Television Reader and The Stanley Kubrick Archives. His essays have appeared in Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, Literature/Film Quarterly, and elsewhere. In addition to his academic experience, Dr Hill worked for several years in film distribution and marketing, handling theatrical campaigns for such films as Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, François Ozon’s Under the Sand, and the Oscar-nominated documentary, On the Ropes.

Featured Presentation (2017) | Mythologizing One’s Own History Through Narrative: Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro
Paul Lowe
London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK

Biography

Paul Lowe is the Course Director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He was responsible for the development and launch of a new part-time version of the course delivered entirely online using web conferencing, blogs and the VLE, launched in 2008. Paul is an award-winning photographer whose work is represented by Panos Pictures, and who has been published in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent, among others. He has covered breaking news around the world, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the destruction of Grozny.

He is a consultant to the World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam, an independent, non-profit organisation that is a major force in developing and promoting visual journalism worldwide. His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post-war situation in Bosnia, was published in April 2005 by Saqi Books. He regularly contributes to international and national conferences in photography, media and education, and has published chapters in edited books on these themes as well.

Paul Lowe is the Founding Judge of the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award.

Keynote Presentation (2017) | Testimonies of light: Photography, Witnessing and History
Alfonso J. García Osuna
Hofstra University, USA

Biography

Alfonso J. García-Osuna has taught at Hofstra University and at City University of NY-Kingsborough for over 35 years. He specialises in mediaeval and early modern literature, receiving his PhD (1989) from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has completed postdoctoral work at the University of Valladolid, Spain, has published six books, and is a frequent contributor to specialised journals. Additionally, Dr García-Osuna is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities.

Alfonso received primary and secondary education in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the place where his family originated and where he grew up. An avid cyclist, he has completed the Road to Santiago, an 867-kilometre route through northern Spain, eight times.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2019) | The Demise of Homo sapiens: Thought and Perception in the Kingdom of Technology
Spotlight Presentation (2017) | Re-Creating the Past: Fascist Comics and the Rehabilitation of History
Linda Schwartz
Ambrose University, Canada

Biography

Dr Linda Schwartz is Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Ambrose University (Calgary, Alberta), Canada. Dr Schwartz earned a Bachelor of Music (Composition) from the University of Manitoba, a Master of Music (Composition) from Western University, and a PhD (Interdisciplinary) from the University of Manitoba, specialising in critical theory and music theory pedagogy. Formerly Dean of Humanities at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (British Columbia) and Dean of Professional Studies/Performing Arts at Trinity Western University (British Columbia), she continues to research and teach in areas of music theory, critical pedagogy, aesthetic philosophy and interdisciplinary hermeneutics. Dr Schwartz is actively engaged in new faculty development, academic planning and programme quality assurance processes, and consults as a specialist in quality assurance and programme design. She publishes on academic leadership and administration in postsecondary education, and is active as a music theory scholar and analyst.

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | Doing Music Theory in a Post-Tonal, Post-Ideological World: Cultural Absorption and the Undoing of Cultural Hierarchies
Anne Boddington
University of Brighton, UK

Biography

Professor of Design Innovation and Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Anne Boddington was educated as an architect and cultural geographer. She has particular interests in the spaces of learning and research and the symbiosis of arts and humanities education as agents of cultural, social and civic transformation. The founding Head of the School of Architecture & Design (1999-2006) and since 2006, as Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities, she was also the Director of the University’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) (a unique partnership between the University, the V&A, the Royal College of Art and the RIBA) and co-director of the HEA’s Subject Centre in Art Design and Media.

A registered architect, fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), she has been an independent governor, trustee, chair and an elected member of many regional and national councils in the cultural sector and in higher education including as a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council Advisory Board (AHRC); Vice Chair of Council for Higher Education in Art& Design (CHEAD) and a trustee of the Design Council/CABE. Working with HEFCE she was a panel member of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2008) and Deputy Chair of D34 for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) panel in 2014 as well as a member of the REF 2014 Equality & Diversity Panel. Her research has been supported and funded by the EU, EPSRC, AHRC, the HEA and HEFCE. She has an international profile as a speaker and advisor for research development, quality assurance, enhancement and teaching innovation in Architecture, Art and Design across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She undertakes regular peer review and research assessment for academic journals and conferences and has worked with and for research councils of Portugal, Iceland, Austria, Germany, Israel and Canada.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Presentation information will be added here shortly

.

Past Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and a Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within the university.

He is also a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

Donald E. Hall
Lehigh University, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Prior to arriving at Lehigh in 2011, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University (WVU). Before his tenure at WVU, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was 2001 Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, for 2004-05, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki for 2006. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He has served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. In 2013, he was elected to and began serving on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and ethical intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. His book, The Academic Community: A Manual For Change, was published by Ohio State University Press in the fall of 2007. His tenth book, Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies, was published in the spring of 2009. In 2012, he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, collaborated on a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, which was published in July of that year. He continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Research and Creative Activity in the Arts and Humanities Today
James Rowlins
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore

Biography

James Rowlins left his native England for Paris, France, where he studied for a BA (Hons) and MA specialising in French cinema. His passion for visual culture subsequently took him to Los Angeles, where he earned a doctorate at the University of Southern California, USA. In addition to exploring literature and film through a theoretical lens, as well as dabbling in filmmaking, his dissertation focused on the crossover between post-war American film noir and the French New Wave, arguing that the subversive manipulation of the Hollywood genre formula by the auteurs constitutes a political aesthetic. He has published articles on contemporary French fiction, film and existentialism, cinematic phenomenology and new perspectives on the New Wave. He has held teaching positions in Europe, America and Japan, and is currently a Lecturer in the Humanities and the Arts Department at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Previous Presentations

Featured Interview Session (2021) | Interview with Tracy Mathewson, Writer/Director of award-winning short film CALIFORNIA
Featured Presentation & Film Screening (2018) | Introducing Brighton Rocks
Gary E. Swanson
University of Northern Colorado, USA (fmr.)

Biography

Gary E. Swanson is currently the Mildred S. Hansen Endowed Chair and Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence at the University of Northern Colorado, USA. From 2005-2007 Professor Swanson was a Fulbright scholar to China and lectured at Tsinghua University and the Communication University of China. In summer 2008 he was Commentator for China Central Television International (CCTV-9) and their live coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games. Swanson repeated his assignment covering the London Olympics for CCTV-4 in the summer of 2012. Previously, he was professor and director of television for nine years at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University where he taught mostly graduate broadcast students. He has been an educator for 26 years; 20 years spent teaching at the university level. Swanson is an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed documentary producer, director, editor, photojournalist, consultant and educator. He has given keynote speeches, presented workshopsretd and lectured at embassies, conferences, festivals, and universities throughout China, South Africa, India, Papua New Guinea, Japan, The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Greece, Germany, Jordan, Spain, Portugal, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Swanson has compiled a distinguished professional broadcast career spanning 13 years: From 1978 to 1991, Swanson worked for the National Broadcasting Company where he was honored with national EMMY's for producing and editing: 'The Silent Shame,' a prime-time investigative documentary; 'Military Medicine,' a two-part investigative series on NBC News; and 'Hotel Crime,' an investigative news magazine piece. Swanson was an editor for 'breaking news' and features for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, the Today Show, Sunrise, Sunday Today, NBC Overnight, A Closer Look, Monitor, and other prime time news magazines. Swanson covered 'breaking news' in 26 states and Canada for the network including trips and campaigns of presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Swanson was the Fulbright distinguished lecturer and consultant in television news to the government of Portugal in 1989. In 1992, he covered the XXV Olympics in Barcelona, Spain for NBC News as field producer and cameraman. Swanson has earned more than 75 awards for broadcast excellence and photojournalism including three national EMMY's, the duPont Columbia Award, two CINE 'Golden Eagles,' 16 TELLY's, the Monte Carlo International Award, the Hamburg International Media Festival's Globe Award, the Videographer Award, The Communicator Award, the Ohio State Award, the CINDY Award, the 2011 Communitas Outstanding Professor and Educator award, the 2013 Professor of the Year award, and many others. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a Bachelor's degree in Education in 1974, and a Master's degree in Journalism in 1993.