6th International ESPRit Conference: Conflict in the Periodical Press

Conflict in the Periodical Press

6th International Conference of the European Society for Periodical Research

28-30 June 2017

IULM (International University of Languages and Media), Milan

Conference programme: Conflict in the Periodical Press.pdf

Conference website: esprit2017.iulm.it

Call for papers:

Conflict is at the core of periodical publishing. Disputes constructed and played out on the periodical stage have been periodical themselves, recurring, though under different names and formats, in different periods from the eighteenth-century to the present day.  There is often an inherently militant aspect to the promulgation of ideologies in the periodical press. However, the spectacularization of conflict accompanying recent events – the in/out rhetoric of Brexit reporting and the representation of some policies on immigration, for instance – has made this key feature of the periodical press particularly visible and urgent. The 2017 ESPRit Conference seeks to explore from interdisciplinary perspectives (literary, linguistic, historical, political, sociological, etc.) how the periodical press mediates and remediates conflicts, including how verbal and visual devices on the periodicals’ pages enact conflict. ESPRit encourages proposals that speak both within and across local, regional and national boundaries and especially those that are able to offer a comparative perspective. We also encourage proposals that examine the full range of periodical culture, that is, all types of periodical publication, including newspapers and specialist magazines, and all aspects of the periodical as an object of study, including design and backroom production.  

Proposals are invited that deal with, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Staging conflicts: mediating political, cultural, aesthetic, social, moral disputes
• Visual rhetoric of conflict: e.g., use of black and white, contrasting colours, positive and negative pictures, captions, vectors in the page layout, etc.
• The grammar of conflict: e.g., use in different periods of verbal rhetoric such as refutation, climax/anticlimax, irony, dos and don’ts, etc.
• The performance of conflict in periodicals: manifestos, monographic issues, provocations and replies.
• Dictating socio-cultural agendas: factions and fashions.
• Cultural values and generational conflict.
• Militancy, mediation and re-mediation.
• Translation as a symptom of cultural conflict.
• Conflict as affect and/or entertainment.
• The business or commerce of conflict
• Possibilities and limits of dialogic rhetoric in periodicals.
• Views, not news? The seduction of ideas and the role of public opinion, with particular reference to the representation of or reporting on legal cases, referendums and opinion polls.

 This conference was live-streamed on YouTube.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Papers from the conference were published in a special issue of the Journal of European Periodical Studies and in Garzone, G.; Logaldo, M.; Santulli, F. (eds.) 2020. Investigating Conflict Discourses in the Periodical Press. Bern/New York: Peter Lang.