2017 CMCS Conference Media & Career Workshop
What will you learn from the workshop?
- Identify media skills and career opportunities inside and outside academia
- Resist bias and build a successful academic career in Hollywood film studies and media practice
- Use basic public relations and become critics and experts in media
- Learn what is ‘sustainable filmmaking’ and integrate films in your media career
Key Speakers:
Dr Nancy Wang Yuen is a scholar of race and ethnicity in film, television, and new media. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English (creative writing) and a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. An associate professor of sociology at Biola University, Dr. Yuen enjoys helping her students view media through a critical lens. She teaches classes on research methods, race/gender in popular culture, Asian American studies, and visual sociology.
Nancy Wang Yuen’s book, Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Forthcoming 2016, Rutgers University Press), examines the barriers African American, Asian American and Latina/o actors face in Hollywood and how they creatively challenge stereotypes.
Dr. Yuen pioneered the first policy report on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in primetime television, in collaboration with Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The Associated Press interviewed her for a feature on the report. She is currently conducting a 10-year follow up study evaluating not only the raw numbers but also the complexity of characters portrayed by Asian American and Pacific Islanders in network/cable television and digital streaming services.
Dr. Yuen is also co-curating an exhibit on Hollywood’s Pioneering Asian American Actresses for the Japanese American National Museum.
URL: www.nancywyuen.com
Dr Vanessa Díaz is a journalist, filmmaker, and scholar. In 2015, she earned a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Díaz is currently adapting her dissertation into a book manuscript tentatively titled Manufacturing Celebrity: Race, Gender, and the Cultural Politics of Red Carpet and Paparazzi Work (under contract with Duke University Press). Her research, which focuses on hierarchies of labor as well as ethnoracial and gender politics in the production of celebrity-focused media, was supported by the Ford Foundation and Smithsonian Institute. This project was inspired by Díaz’s many years working for People magazine. She has published chapters in such anthologies as Contemporary Latina/o Media: Production, Circulation, Politics (NYU Press 2014) and First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship, and Cultural Politics (Bloomsbury Academic Press 2015). Grounded in her experience as a reporter for People magazine, Díazs chapter in First Comes Love, “’Brad& Angelina: And Now…Brangelina!’: A Sociocultural Analysis of Blended Celebrity Couple Names,” examines the phenomenon of celebrity couple name-combining as a racialized marketing tactic aimed at furthering the cultural economy of the normative white heterosexual relationships that celebrity magazines promote. Díaz is called upon by publications ranging from The Atlantic to the Los Angeles Times to comment upon major events in celebrity culture, such as the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. She is able to provide necessary context to understand how and why these events capture the American popular imagination, while simultaneously revealing the hidden labor and racial struggles involved in the production of celebrity media.
URL: http://communications.fullerton.edu/faculty/communications/diaz_vanessa.php
Kevin Del Principe is a writer and director. He earned his MFA in Writing for Screen and Television at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. The son of a snowplow truck driver and a school nurse from Buffalo, New York, he currently lives in Los Angeles and teaches screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University and composition at Pasadena City College. Kevin’s creative work explores complex characters who earnestly strive to catch their angels while their demons chomp at their heels. He currently is an Artistic & Technical Mentor for the ShakeMeUp: International Online Student Shakespeare Film Festival, spearheaded by the Prague Shakespeare Company in the Czech Republic. Kevin recently published an article in Hollywood North Magazine on sustainable filmmaking. He will be speaking about the topic at the media panel of the conference.
Moderator:
Dr Samita Nandy earned her PhD in media and celebrity culture from the Department of Media and Information at Curtin University, Australia. She is also the director of the Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies and writes as a cultural critic on fame. Her international media relations and work led her to be featured on CBC News, CTV’s Breaking News, CP 24, Sun Media 24 Hours News, The Globe and Mail, Hollywood North Magazine, Humber News, and the Canadian Journalism Foundation, among many more. Her work has been published in Celebrity Studies, Performance of Celebrity, The Emotions Industry and Mobile and Digital Communication. Her forthcoming work will be published in the edited collection The Political Economy of Celebrity Activism (Routledge). Her book Fame in Hollywood North: A Theoretical Guide to Celebrity Cultures in Canada has been published by WaterHill Publishing. See more: www.samitanandy.com
Registration includes: Your printed conference package, coffee / tea breaks, access to evening receptions, evening drinks, professional development workshop, and consideration for the CMCS $100 best paper and $100 screen awards.
Conference Chair: Dr Samita Nandy
Conference Committee Members: Dr Jackie Raphael, Dr Nicole Bojko and Kiera Obbard
Conference URL: www.cmc-centre.com/losangeles Twitter @celeb_studies #BGCS17