Serial Power: Political Imaginaries and Global Television

Presentation 

Television series have become one of the most widely shared and influential cultural forms of our time. Circulating across borders through global streaming platforms, they travel between audiences and cultures while remaining rooted in specific historical, social, and political contexts. In doing so, they do more than entertain or reflect existing realities: they shape how we imagine power, community, conflict, identity, and democracy. Through their narratives, characters, and representations of social life, television series offer ways of making sense of political worlds, negotiating collective identities, and envisioning alternative futures.

Serial Power: Political Imaginaries and Global Television explores the political dimensions of serial storytelling across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, seeking to expand our understanding of the global television landscape and challenge the enduring dominance ofanglophone perspectives in television studies. The conference approaches television not simply as a medium through which political ideas are communicated, but as a cultural form that actively participates in the production of political imaginaries: the shared narratives, images, and aspirations through which societies understand themselves, interpret the present, and imagine what might come next.

Program

9:00am-9:30am: Welcome and Coffee 

9:30am-9:45am: Opening Remarks by Sandra Laugier, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

9:45am-11:15am: Panel 1. Representations of Politics and Power

• Othniel Halépian Bahi Go (Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny d'Abidjan)- Dynamiques de la production et débats démocratiques en Côte d’Ivoire : la série Ma famille comme espace de dialogue et d’éveil politique (in Zoom)
• Stéphane Thévenet (Inalco)-Vraisemblance de la politique en régime de faux-semblant : résurgence et mutation du genre politique télévisuel en Corée du Sud dans la série Chief Of Staff 
• Solène POYRAZ (EHESS)-Teşkilat: le pouvoir des séries au service du pouvoir en Turquie

11:15am-11:30am: Coffee Break

11:30am-1:00pm: Panel 2. Reflections on Collective Experiences

• Benjamin Campion (Université de Lille)-(Re)tourner au Bataclan : l'attentat du 13 novembre vécu de l'intérieur dans la mini-série Des vivants 
• Adrienne Sala (Waseda University)-Qui décide face à la catastrophe ? The Days et la représentation des responsabilités politiques et institutionnelles
• Ayelet Lilti (Sciences Po)-Why Talk About Boys? Quelques réflexions sur les séries Our Boys et Les Oubliés

1:00pm-2:00pm: Lunch Break

2:00pm-3:30pm: Panel 3. Identity, Difference, Representation

• Yuval Katz (Loughborough University)-Fragile Identities: Passing and Covering in Arab Labour and Fauda as a Way to Rethink Peace in Israel/Palestine
• Alexandre Diallo (EHESS)-Beyond Gender Performance: Jaq in Top Boy and the Ordinary Conditions of Intelligibility
• Thomas Richard (Université d'Auvergne)-Readdressing the Past in Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

3:30pm-3:45pm: Break

3:45pm-5:30pm: Panel 4. Between the Past and the Future: Political Imaginaries

• Sixtine Deroure (Inalco)-Al-Ikhtiyār, a Fiction of Authority: (Re)Writing History on the Small Screen in Post-Revolutionary Egypt
• Lois Rekiba (Sorbonne Nouvelle, EUPRAXIE)-TBA
• Sylvie Allouche (Université Catholique de Lyon)-Understanding Wrong Choices in Fiction: the Example of Ye Wenjie in The Three-Body Series

5:30pm-6:30pm: Guided Visit of Hôtel de Lauzun (pre-registration required)

Organisers

Conference organized by Sandra Laugier (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Tatsiana Zhurauliova (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), and Anastasia Krutikova (Waseda University), with the support of the Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Paris IAS).

Practical Information

The conference will be held in French and English and is open to the public.

Date: Wednesday, November 4
Time: 9:00 a.m.–6:30 p.m.
Venue: In person at the Institute, 17 quai d’Anjou, Paris 4th arrondissement, France.

Registration and information: Contact Tatsiana Zhurauliova? Tatsiana.Zhurauliova@univ-paris1.fr