Diverse Audiences, Diverse Receptions
New Mexico State University & Courtyard by Marriott Las Cruces
September 28-30, 2023, Las Cruces, NM
See the program and the keynote speakers:
Dr. Janet Staiger (Emeritus Professor, UT Austin) is a theorist, film historian, and author of twelve books and sixty-three essays that fundamentally shaped reception studies and film studies. Her talk is titled “Diverse Conditions and the Pleasures of Audiences Reception.”
Dr. Cedric Burrows (Arizona SU) is a cultural rhetoric scholar and author of Rhetorical Crossover: Black Presence in White Culture. He combines music, education, film, and social movement studies. His talk is titled “The Reception of Blackness in Mainstream Culture.”
Conference Events
The registration was due September 11. It includes the Thursday reception and the Friday-Saturday breakfast and lunch.
The Conference Reception is free for conference participants and will be held at the conference hotel on September 28, 6-8 pm. All other conference events will take place in the NMSU Corbett Center Student Union.
The Reception Banquet, a long-standing RSS tradition, will be on September 30, 7-9 pm, and payments were due September 11.
Presentation Technology
Conference rooms have desktop computers with internet access. Presenters can download their presentations from the internet, bring their presentations on a flash drive, or bring an HDMI cable to connect a personal laptop to the projection screen.
Conference Locations
The Conference Hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott Las Cruces at NMSU is within walking distance to the NMSU campus and a shuttle will operate between the hotel and the conference site. See the acceptance email for the special conference rate of $134 (if paid by September 11).
Courtyard Marriott guests can park for free at the hotel and free shuttles are provided between Corbett Center Student Union and the hotel. Visitor parking for the conference can be accessed via Jordan Street and requires a 1-day NMSU Visitor Pass on weekdays (Saturday is free).
The closest airport, El Paso International Airport (ELP) is 50 miles from Las Cruces, and participants need to arrange their own transportation from the airport to the conference site/hotel. Advance reservations for rental cars or airport shuttles are recommended.
Conference Theme
Diverse Audiences, Diverse Receptions: Audience has been overlooked in text-centered approaches, but is central to reception study, which focuses on how a text is received/meaning is made by an audience. The rise of media/pop culture studies and the increased audience-creator interactions/tensions on social media have made the study of audience central to understanding literature/film/culture. Presentations may also examine the role of fandom; writers/creators engaging diverse audiences; the economics of publishing/adaptations/marketing; book bans/laws; etc.
The Janet Staiger Honorary Scholarship pays conference registration and banquet fees for one graduate student presenting in Media Studies. Selected conference papers will be solicited for publication in the RSS journal, Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, published by PSUP.
