We are pleased to annouce that Dr. Rachel Moseley's new book 'Handmade Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974' has just been published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

More info HERE

Hand-Made Television explores the ongoing enchantment of many of the much-loved stop-frame children's television programmes of 1960s and 1970s Britain. The first academic work to analyse programmes such as Pogles' Wood (1966), Clangers (1969), Bagpuss (1974) (Smallfilms) and Gordon Murray's Camberwick Green (1966), Trumpton (1967) and Chigley (1969), the book connects these series to their social and historical contexts while providing in-depth analyses of their themes and hand-made aesthetics. Hand-Made Television shows that the appeal of these programmes is rooted not only in their participatory address and evocation of a pastoral English past, but also in the connection of their stop-frame aesthetics to the actions of childhood play. This book makes a significant contribution to both Animation Studies and Television Studies; combining scholarly rigour with an accessible style, it is suitable for scholars as well as fans of these iconic British children's programmes.

At the conference 'ESTETICA, IDENTITÀ E INDUSTRIA CULTURALE DEL CINEMA LOCALE
Sardegna e periferie europee dagli anni Novanta a oggi', the department's Karl Schoonover will deliver a talk entitled, "Sardinia, cinematic space, and departicularised place" on 14 December. For more information, go here.

On 2 December at 4pm, Dr. Rachel Moseley will discuss research impact in relation to media history research at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR)

For more information click here.

Abstract:

'The Story of Children's Television, 1946 to Today": Public Engagement and Impact Through Television History'

In this presentation I will elaborate on the development and planning of the recent exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry: 'The Story of Children's Television, 1946 to Today.' The exhibition was planned from the start to produce engagement and impact, and the talk will explore the ways in which this was acheived, in the lead-up to the exhibition, during its stay in Coventry and as it tours the country until 2018. The talk will explore the distinctions between engagement and impact, the value of media history within the humanities for enabling researchers and universities to achieve this, as well as the difficulties of building it into research.

This will be followed by a discussion about creative approaches to research impact, particularly for media history research.

On the first of December, the department's Karl Schoonover will speak on the opening plenary of the three-day international conference at the Università di Torino, called "Intorno al Neorealismo: voci, contesti, linguaggi e culture dell’Italia del dopoguerra" ["In and around Neorealism"]. His talk is entitled, "Gli sguardi del dopoguerra: neorealismo e altri" ["Postwar gazes: Neorealist and otherwise"].

As part of Flatpack Film Festival's Celluloid City Weekend at mac Birmingham several members of the research team working on the AHRC funded research project The Projection Project will give talk about their work, and trace a century-spanning history of projection and projectionists, from fairground showmen to contemporary projection mapping. Dr. Jon Burrows and Dr. Michael Pigott will speak on Saturday the 21st at 4pm, and Claire Jesson will introduce a screening of Wim Wenders' Kings of the Road on Sunday at 2pm.

More information here: http://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/the-projection-project/

And to find out more about The Projection Project, click here: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/film/research/current/theprojectionproject/