Screening Spaces of Youth Symposium
Online (Zoom), 2 June 2023

“Screening Spaces of Youth” aims to bring together scholars interested in the representation of youth in audiovisual texts media, including cinema, television and other media. More specifically, this one-day online symposium places its focus on onscreen representations of spaces of youth. That is, of the spaces that young people inhabit and interact with in films, television, video-games and other forms of media. The symposium is open to all researchers, including postgraduate students, with a scholarly interest in the fields of youth studies, film studies and media studies, and it is free to attend.

In order to leave ample room for different approaches to the topic, we understand youth in its widest sense, as a period that encompasses childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. During these pre-adult life stages, young people inhabit spaces that are never truly theirs. The spaces that children and teenagers interact with are often bound to the decisions of the adults around them, as well as to the rules of institutions controlled by adults. More often than not, children and teenagers are unable to choose their place of residence, where they spend most of their days, and what spaces are available to them. While young adults may have more of a say in the matter, the precarity of the coming-of-age process renders them subject to the whims of the employment and housing markets. With security and stability far from guaranteed, they remain in a post-adolescent limbo, the markers—and spaces of—adulthood out of their reach. Yet, it cannot be said that young people lack agency. Through interaction with spaces, children, teenagers and young adults make them their own, adapting themselves to the spaces within their reach and repurposing those spaces to better suit their needs and desires. Through this process, then, young people reconfigure spaces and their boundaries, imbuing them with new meanings.

Keynote speakers: Prof. Romana Andò (Sapienza University of Rome), Prof. Celestino Deleyto (Universidad de Zaragoza), Prof. Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter), Dr Catherine Lester (University of Birmingham), Prof. Rob Stone (University of Birmingham).

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Youth, space and genre
  • Gendered spaces
  • Space and coming-of-age
  • Youth, uprooting and sense of place
  • Migrant youth
  • Youth and transnational/national space
  • Youth, space and World Cinema
  • Youth, space and philosophies of time
  • Youth and the city
  • Youth and nature
  • Youth in rural spaces
  • Youth in educational spaces
  • Postcolonial spaces of youth
  • Youth and authorship
  • Imagined spaces of youth
  • Spaces of production/consumption

Submission info:
Please send your paper proposal and bio to screeningspacesofyouth2023@gmail.com by March 31st. Abstracts should be no longer than 200 words and bios should not exceed 100 words. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions about the submission process or about your proposal.

Please keep in mind that papers will be 10 minutes long to allow for ample discussion and foster interaction and collaboration among youth media scholars.

Key dates:

  • Paper proposal – March 31, 2023
  • Notification of acceptance – April 28, 2023
  • Symposium – June 2, 2023

Conference organisers:

  • Dr Maria Elena Alampi (University of Exeter)
  • Andrés Buesa (Universidad de Zaragoza)
  • Dr Luis Freijo (King’s College London)
  • Lauren Jones (University of Birmingham)
  • Dr Andrea Sofía Regueira Martín (Universidad de Zaragoza)