MURFREESBORO — Presenters from 16 states and 10 foreign countries will convene on the
MTSU campus May 26-28 for “Mad Men: The Conference,” a scholarly meeting
focused on the groundbreaking AMC network program.
Keynote speakers include Matt Zoller Seitz,
New York film critic and author of “Mad Men Carousel,” and Mimi White, a
professor at Northwestern whose work examines TV and gender.
White will give a talk on “Mad Men and
Women: Quandaries of a Feminist Critic” at 9 a.m. Friday, May 27, in Room 221
of the McWherter Learning Resources Center on the MTSU campus, and Zoller-Seitz
will present “American Carousel: The Personality and History of Mad Men” at 9
a.m. Saturday, May 28, in Room S102 of the Business and Aerospace Building.
These two keynote lectures are free and open
to the public. Visitors who want to attend the entire conference may register
on-site and pay a $50 per person fee. A searchable campus map of MTSU, complete with parking
details, is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.
Sponsored by MTSU’s College of Media and
Entertainment and the College of Liberal Arts, MTSU professors David Lavery and
Jane Marcellus are the conference organizers, along with Drs. Kirsty
Fairclough-Isaacs and Michael Goddard of the University of Salford in
Manchester, England.
Lavery is well known for his work on Joss
Whedon, creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and organized a conference on
Whedon’s work last year at MTSU. Marcellus is a co-author of “Mad Men and
Working Women,” a book on Mad Men and gender, and Fairclough-Isaacs and Goddard
are media scholars at the University of Salford.
Fairclough-Isaacs told the BBC that “Mad
Men” merits critical analysis by academics because “it considered recent U.S.
history through the prism of advertising in such a fresh way. Its depictions of
gender politics, racial bias and the beginnings of counterculture are
particularly significant.”
Ken Paulson, dean of MTSU’s College of Media
and Entertainment, noted that the conference “will offer important new insights
into Mad Men and reflects the College of Media and Entertainment's commitment
to bringing a scholarly perspective to the ever-evolving entertainment
environment.”
For more information
about the conference, visit http://madmentheconference.com. You also can hear Lavery’s comments on the
upcoming edition of “MTSU On the Record” that airs this Sunday, May 22, from 8
to 8:30 a.m. on WMOT-FM (89.5 and http://www.wmot.org ).
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