Keynote Speakers

  • Concepción Cascajosa Virino (UC3M)
  • Paul Julian Smith (CUNY)

Streaming Wars: The New Hispanic TV Series is an international virtual workshop centered on the increasing significance and prominence of Spanish-language streaming content. Digital platforms are important agents in transmitting values and sociocultural changes, and TV series are one of their key vehicles. In 2022, Netflix doubled Spanish TV Originals, forming part of the platform’s global strategy inaugurated in 2019 (Goldbart 2023). This operation continued to increase with non-English productions that have managed to transcend borders; for example, Money Heist ​[La Casa de Papel​]​, ‘a Spanish language heist thriller, [that] became the most watched non-English series on Netflix ever’, as Netflix confirmed in another report (Q1 2018).

The popularity of Spanish-language series via streaming platforms such as Netflix demonstrates, according to Paul Julian Smith, a preference for ‘female protagonists and female audiences’ with particular emphasis on the genre of the period drama that stands in direct contrast with US television production, which is ‘contemporary and male-biased’ (2021 99-100). The impact of this on Spanish televisual production cannot be understated, as Deborah Castro and Concepción Cascajosa Virino point out: ‘[the] emergence of free and subscriber-funded internet-distributed television services in Spain has significantly increased the amount of television production in the country while also changing the dynamics of Spanish television production more generally’ (2020 154). The work of Cascajosa and Smith forms part of an emerging global field focused on the significance of the television/streaming series that includes work by Ramon Lobato (2019) and Amanda Lotz (2021), and in Hispanophone context, forthcoming edited volumes such as Crisis TV: Hispanic Television Narratives After 2008 by María Caña Jiménez and Vinodh Venkatesh and Critical Perspectives on Netflix’ Spain by Jorge González del Pozo and Xosé P. Boán.

This workshop will explore the intersection of visual analysis and critical thinking and how spectators can navigate the contradictions these productions provoke. Participants will critically navigate major TV series produced in this century in Latin America and Spain, using this media form as a springboard for engaging in interdisciplinary learning and discussion. Workshop sessions will involve the dissemination of papers prior to the event to facilitate greater discussion and debate among participants, and our aim is to publish contributions in the form of an edited volume after the event.

Papers may consider, but should not be limited to, the following topics:

  • Production, distribution, consumption
  • Streaming platforms, material culture and consumerism
  • Nation and identity in the age of “Netflix nations”
  • Logics of serialization and multimodality
  • Intersection of genre and representation
  • Algorithm, the male gaze and paradigmatic shifts in viewership
  • Archival impulses, audience participation, and engagement
  • Anthropocene, extractivism and sustainability
  • Political imagination, social movements and resistance
  • Queer, gender and sexuality Studies
  • Feminism and the “Me Too” Movement
  • The role of superhero narratives
  • Representation of neurodivergence
  • Displacement, migrancy or nomadic communities

Please send a brief abstract and author bio to streamingspanish@gmail.com by Sunday 30th April 2023.

Organizers

Xavier Dapena (Iowa State University) and Fiona Noble (University of Stirling, Scotland).

Languages

English and Spanish

Timeline

5th April 2023 Call for Papers Distribution
30th April 2023 Deadline Abstracts
10th May 2023 Acceptance contributions
15th May 2023 Circulate Programme for the event
15th May 2023 Website launch
1st June 2023 Circulate draft papers amongst registered participants
30th June 2023 Event takes place
1st October 2023 Deadline for submission chapters
Fall 2023 Peer-review of full volume
Spring 2024 Publication in print