Re-thinking Advertising: Histories, Praxis and Interpretations.

22-23 April 2010, University of Melbourne, Melbourne

The Cultural History of Economies Research Hub (CHERHub) in the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne, together with RMIT University and University of Technology Sydney, invites you to participate in this forthcoming event.

CHERHub provides a meeting point for an interdisciplinary group of scholars who are engaged in, and seeking to orientate and develop, a cultural approach to the study of economies. The working premise for this approach is that the economy is a culturally charged arena and that the coherence of the economy and its ability to function depends on the aptitude of people to interact, to allocate values and norms, and also on their willingness to share representations of these values and norms.

Advertising is an important site for scholars engaged in this approach. It is the powerhouse of the modern global economy yet little research has been done on how this industry works in Australia.

This symposium aims to place the advertising industry in its historical contexts, explore how it works and discuss its multi-faceted meanings. The focus of the symposium is Australia but we also welcome papers dealing with global aspects of the topic.

Keynote speakers include Dr Liz McFall (Open University, UK), author of Advertising: A Cultural Economy (2004) and Professor John Sinclair, University of Melbourne.

Themes for 20 minute papers might include, but are not limited to:

• The cultural economy of advertising
• Hierarchies in advertising agencies
• Impact of new technologies
• Global/national/local
• Remaking cultural knowledge
• Ethnicity, gender and class
• Advertising politics
• Recording advertising histories
• Advertising pedagogy
• Brands and identity
• The economics of advertising
• Histories of advertising

We will be looking to publish selected papers from this conference and we welcome proposals from post-graduate students.

Please send a title, 300 word abstract and short biography to jackied@unimelb.edu.au by Friday 15 January 2010.

http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/cherhub/