Brennen, Bonnie

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteCollege of Communication Faculty Research andPublications Communication, College of4-1-2001In Danger of Dilution?Bonnie BrennenMarquette University, bonnie.brennen@marquette.eduPublished version. Cultural and Critical Studies News (Spring 2001): 4-5. Publisher Link. © 2001Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Used with permission.Bonnie Brennen was affiliated with University of Missouri at the time of publication.4BONNIE BRENNEN, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURIWhen the Qualitative Studies division was founded in the 1970s, it wasenvisioned as a cutting edge alternative to the prevailing empiricallygrounded positivism that saturated the field of mass communicationresearch. At the time, AEJMC was a philosophically conservative organization, with strong ties to industry, and abelief in the power of quantification. From its inception the QualitativeStudies Division programmed theoreti-cally informed cultural and criticalresearch and provided scholars with avenue through which to present workthat challenged the reigning ideologyof AEJMC. For years, the division was unique.It purposefully distanced itself fromthe majority of the other divisions andfought to provide a program that wasspecially suited to its membership. THINGS BEGAN TO CHANGE in the 1990s.QS interests and concerns began topercolate throughout the organization.AEJMC also grew unwieldy, with fartoo many divisions and interest groupsvying for time on an overloaded pro-gram. In an effort to reduce the total num-ber of sessions and streamline the pro-gram, divisions were encouraged tojointly program some of their researchsessions.At that time, I was a QS officer andI cautiously supported the joint pro-gramming plan. At the time QS boardmembers felt that if we continued todesign programming specifically forour members and attempted to “sell”our ideas to other divisions that QS’svisibility might be increased. But fore-most in our decision was the intentionto always maintain programming con-trol.These days, the Cultural andCritical Studies division (the renamedQS division) is seen throughout theprogram, co-sponsoring all of its pan-els and most of its research sessions. WHILE SOME MEMBERS might see theadded visibility as a positive develop-ment, what troubles me is that there isno longer anything to distinguish ourdivision from the rest of the organiza-tion. Many of our sessions have not beendesigned with our members in mind.We regularly lend our name and sup-port to sessions that are in direct con-flict with what the division represents,and I fear that C&CS now risksbecoming merely another pedestrianAEJMC division. THESE DAYS, EVEN when C&CS mem-bers design a research panel, that ses-sion often becomes watered down andless meaningful by the inclusion ofpanelists who do not share our divi-sion’s perspectives. When was the lasttime you attended a C&CS sessionthat you would describe as cutting-edge?C&CS is at a crossroads. We cancontinue to be good citizens ofAEJMC, forging alliances with otherdivisions and interest groups and play-ing the chip game well. However, ifwe continue to follow this course, it ismy feeling that our small division willsoon outlive its usefulness. The exist-ing membership will become increas-ingly distant and removed and manyof our members will probably chose tofocus their efforts on another division. THERE IS, OF COURSE, another alterna-tive. We can reinvigorate C&CS andcan strive once again to be known asthe rabble-rousers of AEJMC. Ibelieve that it’s imperative for each ofus to start thinking about issues andtopics that we want to focus on in theupcoming years. We could devote a column in theIn danger of5newsletter to member feedback onfuture programming. That feedbackcould culminate in a lively discussionduring our business meeting at whichtime several specific topics and issuesare chosen to explore for our next con-vention.IN THE SPIRIT OF STARTING the discus-sion, I’d like to share a few of my ownsuggestions. Our name change to Cultural andCritical Studies gives us the perfectopportunity to design a series of panelsthat address theoretical trends in cul-tural studies and critical theory andtheir particular relevance to contempo-rary communication research. One research panel for example,might consider the potential usefulnessof the “founding fathers” of BritishCultural Studies (Raymond Williams,Richard Hoggart, and E.P. Thompson)to current media studies. Another panel might assess connec-tions between critical theory and politi-cal economy. Still another panel mightassess the relationship between post-modernism and cultural studies.While some of these topics mightpotentially be of interest to other divi-sion members, the general popularityof our sessions outside of our divisionshould be of little concern to C&CS. NOW, SOME OF YOU might like my sug-gestions and others might prefer thatwe focus on other things. Yet, what I’d like for each of you todo is to begin a conversation withC&CS board members about what youwant our division to focus on. As a for-mer head of the Qualitative Studiesdivision, I’m not ready to give up onour division. I hope you aren’t either.❖a shifting nexus of social, political andeconomic tensions in which differentsocial groupings compete for powerand authority; and secondly that theform and content of all visual texts areindivisible from the historical periodsin which they get made. WE INVITE ESSAYS that might discussfilm, photography, painting, televisionor visual news media. We would alsobe interested in considering proposalsthat discuss other visual cultures, suchas poster art, advertising, newspapercartoons, and so forth. Essays mightconsider specific visual texts, orgroups of texts, within the broad con-texts of various historical situationsand developments, including:• the rise of monopoly capitalismin the second half of C19; • Civil War and Reconstruction; • urbanization and industrializa-tion; • the economic crises of the1870s-1890s; • World War One; • the suffragette movement; • the first Red Scare of 1919-20; • Prohibition; • early Fordism in the 1920s; • the Great Depression; • World War Two; • the Fordist ‘long boom’ of thepostwar era; • McCarthyism and the Red Scare; Proposals are invited for a bookof edited essays on Americanvisual cultures of the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries.THE GROWTH IN POPULARITY of thestudy of visual culture is clearly indi-cated by recent trends in academicpublishing and higher education cur-ricula. Much of the recently pub-lished material has placed stressupon the processes through whichcertain kinds of visual culture (filmover TV, painting over photography,for example) are consumed. This stress often downplays thehistorical conditions in which visualtexts are produced, and the contextu-al relationships between visual andother historical texts.THE BOOK EDITORS INVITE proposalsfor essays to be included in a multi-disciplinary textbook on the histori-cal dimensions of United States’visual cultures.On completion we anticipate thatthe book will offer a broadly chrono-logical account of significantmoments, events and debates withinAmerican history, as they were repre-sented (overtly or “unconsciously”)in the visual media of their times. The book will be organizedaround two central assumptions:firstly, that history may be defined as• Cold War foreign policy; • the New Left and other dissent-ing cultures of the 1960s, such ascivil rights struggles, Black Powermovements, and Second-Wave femi-nism; • the Vietnam War; oil crisis andeconomic stagnation in the 1970s; • the emergence of neo-liberaleconomics, Reaganism and the NewRight;• the ‘culture wars’; • the globalizing of Americancapital, and the shift from a regimeof ‘Fordist’ political economy to anew regime of ‘post-Fordism’; These topics are suggestive only,and we leave it to contributors to setthe historical frame of reference inwhich they wish to work. PROPOSALS OF AROUND 500 wordsmay be sent by email toD.J.Holloway@derby.ac.uk, or byregular mail to: Dr David Holloway, Departmentof American Studies, HumanitiesLanguages and Law, University ofDerby, Kedleston Road, DerbyDE22 1GB, England.Please mail all proposals to arriveno later than June 30th 2001. Whereappropriate, contributors are alsowelcome to submit any completedessays for consideration at thisstage.❖Proposals sought for book on American Visual Cultures

In Danger of Dilution?

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