International Bond Conference at Saarland University

By: FSWL team

Published:
2009-03-09

THE CULTURES OF JAMES BOND - AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AT SAARLAND UNIVERSITY

Since his earliest appearances in print and on the screen, James Bond has become a popular icon and has developed nothing short of his own cultural mythology. His iconic status today may well hide the fact that through the years, “James Bond” has acquired very different meanings in a variety of contexts. He has provided a screen onto which the heterogeneous desires of nationally, culturally and socially diverse readers, viewers and users have been projected.
In addition, Bond has long become an academic topic as well, not just in film studies, but also in literary and cultural studies. As a cultural phenomenon entangled in the histories not only of Western cultures since World War II, Bond more than merits a conference as a forum to discuss new approaches and recent revisions.

Bond has been around.
Both as a fictional character and as a cultural product, Bond has crossed national, media, and generic boundaries.

We invite papers on topics including:
• Bond and tourism - travelling in and with Bond
• Nomadic Bond - concepts of space in the films and novels
• National, international, transnational Bonds
- Bond and Englishness/Britishness; national appropriations; Bond’s international appeal; Bond and the transnational
• Bond and (trans-, inter-)mediality - crossing generic and media boundaries; films and novels; spin-offs; parodies; Bond in games, graphic novels, etc.

Bond is different.
Constructions of Bond can be analysed by focussing on categories based on difference.

Topics might include:
• Ethnicity – post- and neo-colonial approaches
• Class – Bond as class(less) hero and/or as a representative of an upper class; patterns of consumption based on class; the social stratifications surrounding Bond; the utopian and dystopian ‘other’ communities
• Gender – constructions and performances of maleness, masculinity and femininity
• Ethics – Bond and the ethical turn, Bond’s turns on ethics
• Bond and cultural hermeneutics

Bond means culture and politics.
The interactions of the written, visual, material and digital texts of Bond with their social, political, cultural and/or historical contexts have already proved a rewarding field of enquiry.

Papers might focus specifically on:
• Bond, history and historiography
• The (cultural) politics and ideologies of Bond
• The semiotics of Bond
• Bond and material culture
• Bond, fandom, fetishization, desire

Bond is big business.
Commercial aspects of popular culture have been intensely debated since the 1940s.

With regard to Bond, topics might include:
• Bond as franchise – forms of production, marketing, etc.
• Bond and commodity culture – selling, buying, consuming Bond
• Bond and the processes of signification in the age of digital capitalism
• Canonizing and institutionalizing Bond in academia

MANY THANKS TO OUR AMERICAN FRIEND GARY FIRUTA FOR THE HEAD'S UP ON THIS EVENT!

For more information, visit the website below:
www.uni-saarland.de/bond

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International Bond Conference at Saarland University

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