Workshop: “Global Hollywood, Global Audiences”
On Friday, July 14, 2023, the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES Research Group will host an in-person workshop on “Global Hollywood, Global Audiences.” The workshop is designed to discuss the global impact of Hollywood cinema and its importance to global audiences. It will bring together scholars of historical and contemporary audiences, memories of moviegoing, and home movies in local, national, and global contexts. A central goal is to think critically about how we can examine the global influence of Hollywood cinema in the study of global audiences. We would also like to look at recent thinking on cultural imperialism, as well as issues of representation and national identities. Another goal of the workshop is to reflect on audience research methods and critically discuss the work of data analysis and the presentation of research results.
Speakers at the workshop include Ana Rosas Mantecón (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa), Philippe Meers (University of Antwerp), Christine Hämmerling (University of Zurich/University of Hamburg) and Fabiola Alcalá Anguiano (Universidad de Guadalajara), as well as members of the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES research group Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes and Alejandra Bulla (Leibniz Universität Hannover). In addition to the presentations and discussions, the workshop will also feature Maya Nedyalkova’s (Oxford Brookes University) research project on film consumption by Bulgarian cinema audiences.
The morning sessions of this workshop are open to the public. The workshop takes place in room 112 (Conti campus, bulding 1501).
Sign up for the workshop at Leibniz University Hannover under: hollywood@uni-hannover.de
Workshop Program
9:30–9:45 Introduction: Global Hollywood and Audience Research
9:45–10:00 Featured Project
Maya Nedyalkova (Oxford Brookes University), “From Tarzan (1932) to Titanic (1997) – Hollywood in the Memories of Three Generations of Bulgarian Film Viewersa” (video recording)
10:00–10:45 Session 1
Ana Rosas Mantecón (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa), “The Transnationalization of Golden Age Mexican Cinema. Hollywood’s Otherness?”
Philippe Meers (University of Antwerp), “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. New Cinema History, Historical Audience Research and Hollywood”
Christine Hämmerling (University of Zurich / University of Hamburg), “Identification with a TV-show and Its Characters”
10:45–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–11:45 Session 2
Kathleen Loock (Leibniz University Hannover), “What Hollywood Movies Mean to Me: Individual and Collective Memory”
Stefan Dierkes (Leibniz University Hannover), “The Good, the Bad, and the American: German Audiences Negotiating Hollywood”
Alejandra Bulla (Leibniz University Hannover), “Movements Across Borders: The Film Market Dynamics between the US and Mexico”
11:45–12:00 Coffee Break
12:00–13:00 Discussion 1: Addressing the Global Impact of Hollywood Cinema in Audience Research
Alejandra Bulla, Ana Rosas Mantecón, Christine Hämmerling, Philippe Meers, Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes
13:00–14:30 Lunch
14:30–16:00 Session 3: Group Work with Research Data
Group 1: German Case Study
Stefan Dierkes, Christine Hämmerling, (Kathleen Loock)
Group 2: Mexican Case Study
Alejandra Bulla, Fabiola Alcalá, Ana Rosas Mantecón, Philippe Meers, (Kathleen Loock)
16:00–16:15 Coffee Break
16:15–16:45 Session 4: Results of Group Work and Discussion
Alejandra Bulla, Fabiola Alcalá, Ana Rosas Mantecón, Christine Hämmerling, Philippe Meers, Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes
16:45–17:00: Coffee Break
17:00–18:00: Discussion 2: Challenges in Audience Research – Improving the Recruitment Process
18:30 Dinner
Workshop Participants
Alejandra Bulla is currently pursuing her PhD at the English Department of Leibniz Universität Hannover. She is a member of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), where she focuses on Mexican audiences. She has a Master’s degree in American Studies from the University of Erlangen, Germany, and a bachelor’s degree as English teacher from the Universidad Francisco José de Caldas in Bogota, Colombia.
Stefan Dierkes is an American Studies PhD student at Leibniz University Hannover. He is part of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). His dissertation looks at Hollywood’s remaking culture and its impact on German audiences, combining empirical methods, historical research, and film analysis.
Christine Hämmerling is a Senior Teaching and Research Assistant at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Zurich University (since 2014). Her main research interests are social movements, trust and professionalization, trade and gift giving, ego documents (Das dokumentierte Ich, 2018), popular taste, reception of popular media & media theory (Sonntags, 20.15 Uhr: Tatort, 2016), the anthropology of space (Wissensmedien des Raums, 2020), cultural theory, and qualitative methods.
Kathleen Loock is Professor of American Studies and Media Studies at Leibniz University Hannover and director of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Her research focuses on Hollywood’s remaking practice, seriality, and the role memory and cultural repetition perform on the levels of identity formation and for the maintenance of imagined communities. She has published on remakes, sequels, reboots, and the nostalgia franchise as well as on TV series revivals, and written, edited, or co-edited six books and special issues on these topics.
Philippe Meers is a Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, where leads the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) and the Center for Mexican Studies. He has published widely on historical and contemporary film cultures and audiences. With Richard Maltby and Daniel Biltereyst, he co-edited Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (2011), Audiences, Cinema and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History (2012) and The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History (2019). His latest co-edited volume is Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches, with Ifdal Elsaket and Daniel Biltereyst (Bloomsbury, World Cinema series, 2023).He co-coordinates the Spanish language research network ‘Cultura de la Pantalla’.
Ana Rosas Mantecón holds a PhD in Anthropology and is a professor and researcher in the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana’s Department of Anthropology, Mexico. She specializes in cinema, museum and heritage audiences, as well as cultural access policy. She has promoted the dialogue between theory and practice in cultural management through the participation in different international, national and regional programs dedicated to the professionalization of cultural mediators, applied research and audience development.
Featured Research Project
The workshop also features a research projects on memories of Bulgarian film audiences by Maya Nedyalkova (Oxford Brookes University). Maya will present her work in a pre-recorded video, titled “Shifting Cinema-Going and Film Consumption Patterns in Bulgaria.”
Maya Nedyalkova is a Research Fellow for the Creative Industries Research and Innovation Network at Oxford Brookes University, interested in popular culture and film/media audiences. She examined aspects of the transnational Bulgarian film industry during her PhD at the University of Southampton, which was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. For her British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford Brookes, she explored Bulgarian film audiences’ memories of film-viewing in relation to current habits, practices and preferences. She co-edited two themed sections, titled “International Film Audiences”, for Participations Journal of Audience and Reception Studies and has published in journals (Open Screens and Studies in Eastern European Cinema) and edited volumes (The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative New Cinema Histories, Routledge Companion to European Cinema, Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe, and Transformation Processes in Post-socialist Screen Media). A beta version of the website with the findings of her most recent project can be found here: https://bulgarianfilmaudiences.org/
Register now to participate in the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES project!
You want to be part of the project and share your memories of Hollywood movies with us? Then register here to participate. We will let you know when the questionnaire is launched on our digital research platform.