“Provokaties zijn aanleidingen | Provocations are catalysts”

Roel van Duyn, “Van palingoproer tot provohappening,” Provo, no. 3 (22 September 1965)

Console-ing Passions was founded in 1989 by a group of feminist media scholars and artists looking to create a space to present work and foster feminist scholarship on issues of television, culture, and identity. Since its first conference at the University of Iowa in 1992, Console-ing Passions has expanded to become not only the most important conference for scholars studying gender in television but also among the top conferences for feminist scholars of media more broadly.

In 2027, Console-ing Passions comes to Amsterdam under the theme Provocations. Our motto takes inspiration from Amsterdam’s Provo movement and Roel van Duyn’s proposition that provocations are aanleidingen: they serve as catalysts to create occasions (or the Provos’ favorite word, “happenings”) in which pre-existing as well as emergent conflicts and contradictions become visible. Amsterdam offers a resonant history for thinking about provocation in these terms, from the Provos’ playful interventions in public life to feminist and queer actions that used disruption and media visibility to challenge established norms and inequalities. In line with this genealogy, we envision CP 2027 becoming such an occasion: a provocative space for feminist media scholarship to encounter, question, and rework its objects, histories, methods, and futures.

The 2027 Conference Organizing Committee in the Department of Media Studies/ASCA at the University of Amsterdam invites proposals for individual papers, pre-constituted panels, and pre-constituted roundtables addressing media, broadly conceived, through intersectional feminist perspectives, including questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, coloniality, and other systems of power and inequality. Proposals need not address the conference theme, but we particularly welcome reflections on what provocation might mean for feminist media studies. How have media and media practices been provocative, and how do understandings of what is “provocative” change and collide? Who gets to provoke, and who is presumed to be provocative by speaking, appearing, desiring, refusing, embracing or making media? What happens when boundaries between media, disciplines, generations, publics, or forms of knowledge are disturbed? How might provocation operate epistemologically or methodologically, making different objects, archives, relations, pleasures, or ways of knowing perceptible? And what might such questions provoke us to reconsider about the histories, boundaries, and futures of feminist media scholarship itself?

CP 2027 will be an in-person conference because this is a better experience for everyone involved. Virtual participation can be accommodated, but only in exceptional circumstances and on a case-by-case basis.

We are working to make childcare and mobility support available during CP 2027 and will provide further information as options are confirmed.

Submission Guidelines

We invite proposals in the following formats:

Individual papers

A title and abstract of up to 300 words.

Pre-constituted panels

Three papers plus one provocateur, who will offer a critical response and moderate the discussion. Proposals should include a panel title, a 150-word rationale, and a title and abstract of up to 300 words for each paper.

Pre-constituted roundtables

Four or five participants and one provocateur, who will moderate and enliven the discussion. Roundtables should be designed around exchange rather than a sequence of short papers. Proposals should include a title and up to 400 words identifying the central question or tension, explaining the envisioned format and participants’ contributions, and indicating how the session will create space for wider discussion. Experimental and original formats are particularly welcome.

All proposals should include a brief biographical note of up to 100 words for each participant. Panels and roundtables bringing together different career stages, institutional locations, and perspectives are encouraged.

A delegate may participate in a maximum of two capacities across the conference programme.

Proposals should be submitted via this form by Tuesday, 1 December 2026, 23:59 Central European Time (CET). Submission link: https://forms.gle/1i62NU3NGJ3SYbwJ7

Notifications of acceptance will be sent in late January 2027.

For questions about the conference or the submission process, please contact the organizing committee at cp27-fgw@uva.nl.

Please watch for updates and news at http://www.console-ingpassions.org/ and on the conference website, which is expected to go live at the end of September.

Conference Organizers: Misha Kavka and Balázs Boross
Department of Media Studies/ASCA, University of Amsterdam