Register for The Cultures of Early Television
John Wyver writes: I am delighted to say that registration is open for The Cultures of Early Television conference at the University of Westminster on Thursday 2 and Friday 3 July You can sign up here for free, thanks to the invaluable support of The British Academy Conference scheme.
The Cultures of Early Television is a two-day conference about television before the Second World War in Britain, continental Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union. With presentations, panels and screenings of rare archival material, the event marks the centenary of the first British public presentation of what John Logie Baird called “true television”, which took place in London in early 1926.
The conference brings together scholars and archivists from Britain, Europe and North America to explore imaginings and understandings of early television, and its productions and people, rather than its technologies, which has been the dominant construction of this history to date
One central focus will be early television’s intermedial entanglements with the radio, cinema, theatre, dance and visual arts of the first half of the twentieth century. Parallel to this will be a concern to develop a transnational dialogue for a field that has largely developed along national lines.
The conference should be of interest not only to media historians, but also to those concerned with mid-century culture more broadly, to social historians, and to those with a general interest in the development of television.
A list of keynote and other confirmed speakers so far is on the registration page, with a small number of others to be added shortly. You would not expect me to say anything different, but I really do think this is going to be a fascinating event, with great presentations, some rare archival screenings, and terrific people.
Front Row: The Birth of Television – A Forgotten History
As a taster for the event, or if you would simply like to know more, over the Easter weekend BBC Radio 4 broadcast a special edition of Front Row about the first years of television, to which I contributed, which you can listen to here.
The other guests are Lisa Kerrigan, senior curator of television at the BFI; Francis Spufford, whose new novel Nonesuch is partly set in the BBC studio at Alexandra Palace in 1939; and Joy Whitby, producer and creator of significant programmes including Play School and Jackanory. Samira Ahmed chairs immaculately.
Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain
… and of course my book about all this remains on sale from Bloomsbury here. Andrew Male was kind enough to give it an enthusiastic review in Sight and Sound, describing it as
this meticulously assembled and thoroughly entertaining history of the first decade of British television… Wyver… has miraculously reconstructed a vanished narrative of interwar life.
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