Forms and Feelings of Kinship in the Contemporary World
Date: Saturday 27th April 2024 (10am - 5pm)
Location: Wolfson Research Exchange, University of Warwick (in-person)
Keynote speaker: Professor Janet Carsten (University of Edinburgh)
Registration is closed
Speakers'/Helpers' Booking Form - for invited keynote speaker, helpers and organisers
Delegate Booking Form - for all fee paying delegates/speakers attending in person (£5.00/£10.00 registration fee)
Booking Terms and Conditions including Cancellation/Refund Policy 
(important - please read before booking)
About the Conference
How can kinship studies shed light on the representation of kinship on screen? How can what we see on-screen offer new materials and perspectives from which to investigate kinship? This one-day conference aims to provide a platform for the intersection between screen studies and kinship studies. It invites ten researchers from both anthropology and film and media studies to address multiple audio-visual texts of kinship, ranging from fiction to documentary, from arthouse film to popular genres, and from West to East.
From both non-human and ecological perspectives, in what ways can we make kin? What are the new visions of queer families and communities in terms of today’s geopolitics? How are kin ties utilised as narrative devices for cinematic genres and what might this be symptomatic of? All these questions will be discussed in the conference, challenging a rigid vision of kinship that has been embedded in anthropocentrism, heterosexism, racialism, nationalism and neoliberalism. In so doing, this conference hopes to propose new, open and fluid approaches from which to explore various forms and feelings of kinship in the contemporary world.
Programme
Keynote:
Creative Kinship: Extending Familial and Moral Imaginaries
Professor Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh
Chair: Professor Alastair Phillips
Panel 1: Creatures and Landscapes
Chair: Professor Catherine Constable
‘Creatures, human and animal’: Radical tenderness in Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Professor Carole-Anne Sweeney, Goldsmiths, University of London
Familial lands: Kinship between the dead and the living in This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Mosese, 2019)
Dr Monika Kukolova, the University of Salford
Creature Cameos: Filming ‘Who or What’
Killian O’ Dwyer, Goldsmiths, University of London
Panel 2: Queer Families and Communities
Chair: Professor Karl Schoonover
Monsters, wax and glitter: Alexis Langlois’s and Adam Pendleton’s queer kinships on screen
Airelle Amédro, the University of Warwick; Arthur Ségard, New York University
Absent Mothers and Cross-country Queer Kinship: Bad Women of China
Dr Xi W. Liu, University of Sheffield
Brothers of the Night? Queer Kinship Between MSM Migrant Sex Workers in Contemporary Documentary Film
Dr Lawrence Alexander, the Ruskin School of Art (University of Oxford)
Panel 3: Kinship and Genre
Chair: Dr James Taylor
There's no School like the OId School: Fraternal Kinship, Bromance and the Bromantic Comedy
Dr Pete Deakin, the University of Salford
Nationalism and Kinship in Chinese Cinema: from revolutionary model opera Red Lantern (1970) to science fiction Wandering Earth (2019)
Xinting Du, University of Cambridge
“I don’t need friends. I got family”: Racelessness and La Familia in the Fast and Furious Franchise
Dom Thornton, the University of Warwick
Useful Information
Transportation
How to get to the University of Warwick:
Coventry is the nearest mainline train station. Here is the linkLink opens in a new window about travelling to the campus.
How to get to the University of Warwick Library:
The conference will take place at the Library, which is in the centre of campus. Here is the Interactive Campus MapLink opens in a new window.
How to get to the Wolfson Research Exchange (the Floor 3 extension):
Here is the map that can guide you to the Wolfson Research Exchange in the library building.
When you reach the Library building, enter via the main entrance and proceed to Floor 3, either via the stairs or lift. Cross the signposted passage to the Floor 3 extension, which is where the Wolfson Research Exchange is located. There will be helpers to guide you during the registration time.
If you don't have a Warwick ID card, please bring a photographic ID (e.g., staff or student ID card, driving licence, etc.) on the day, the library can issue a temporary pass for you to access the library gate.
Accommodation
Two hotels on campus: RadcliffeLink opens in a new window, ScarmanLink opens in a new window
There are plenty of hotels in Coventry and Kenilworth with the Coventry suburb of Earlsdon being nearest.
Get in Touch
This conference is supported by the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Warwick and is organised by Yue Su from the Department of Film and Television Studies.
If you have any questions about the conference, please get in touch using the contact details below.
Email: kinshipconference2024
X/Twitter: @kinship2024
