[NetBehaviour] Fwd: [ecrea] CFP - Hard Times: Austerity and Popular Culture

[dave miller]

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From: Carpentier Nico <nico.carpentier at vub.ac.be>
Date: 6 January 2014 16:56
Subject: [ecrea] CFP - Hard Times: Austerity and Popular Culture
To: ecrea <ecrea at listserv.vub.ac.be>





Hard Times: Austerity and Popular Culture



Edited by Helen Davies and Claire O’Callaghan





“I said pretend you've got no money, she just laughed and said oh you're so
funny. I said yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.” (“Common
People”, Pulp)

“I decree today that life
Is simply taking and not giving
England is mine - it owes me a living” (“Still Ill”, The Smiths)



“Folks don't laugh so loud when you've a grand in your back pocket.” (The
Full Monty)



Although the British Prime Minister David Cameron popularised the renowned
axiom ‘the age of austerity’ in a speech of 2009, political discourse has
long given shape to popular rhetoric on the subject. The sentiments of
‘make do and mend’ and ‘boom and bust’ offers two such examples that have
filtered into popular and national conscious. Indeed, there have been
memorable occasions when political parties have sought to appropriate the
vehicle of popular culture to articulate their agendas; who can forget Tony
Blair’s use of the D:Ream dance anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ as part
of the Labour Party’s Manifesto in the 1996 General Election, for example?



However, political idiom is not the sole medium to express the effects of
austerity, recession and the global economic crisis in contemporary
society. From Jarvis Cocker’s glamorisation of the sexual tension between
the ‘haves’ and have nots’ in Pulp’s ‘Common People’, to Morrissey’s
cynical yet  dulcet tones espousing what today’s  Government might
 describe as the scourge of benefit culture in The Smith’s ‘Still Ill’,
popular culture has sought continually  to explore and engage with the
social and cultural manifestations of recession and austerity. John Self,
the protagonist of Martin Amis’s Money learned hard lessons about ‘maxed
out’ credit cards in the Thatcherite Yuppie culture of the 1980s, but the
summer of 2013 will see Kirstie Allsopp share her austerity-inspired
know-how with prime-time audiences in the Channel 4 television series Fill
Your House For Free.



Our edited book collection, Hard Times: Austerity and Popular Culture seeks
to map the diverse ways in which austerity is—and has been—reflected in and
by popular culture. We solicit submissions on any aspect of austerity in
popular culture that can offer new and innovative insights into its
representation and ideologies.



In what ways have literature, film and television, and music (amongst other
cultural modes) given expression to austerity? How are its effects
conveyed? What commentaries does popular culture offer on, about or towards
the age of austerity? How has the expression of austerity in popular
culture changed over time, and what lessons about representations of
austerity in popular culture from the past can be learnt in the present?
Can popular culture have a significant influence in shifting our attitudes
towards political discourses of austerity?



In soliciting submissions from across the arts and humanities, the editors
welcome submissions that could consider the following themes:



·         Representing recession

·         Credit and spending culture

·         Boom and bust – individual and cultural

·         The Gendering of austerity

·         Thrift chic

·         Self-sufficiency vs. spending cuts

·         The austere family

·         Race, disability, and/or class and austerity

·         Benefits culture(s)

·         Nostalgia and austerity

·         Representing contemporary austerity through the past

·         Unemployment and/or poverty

·         Youth and austerity

·         Revolution, revolt and protest against austere times





Please submit abstracts of 600 words and a short biographical note to both
editors, Dr Helen Davies (Helen.Davies at tees.ac.uk) and Dr Claire
O’Callaghan (cfo3 at le.ac.uk) by 31st January 2014. If accepted, completed
chapters of 6000 words will be expected by 1st September 2014. A proposal
will be submitted to I.B. Tauris from whom we have a received an expression
of interest.



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