Damien Stankiewicz

My research explores mass media, and producers of mass media, as means by which to better understand contemporary debates about, and re-imaginings of, national, trans-national, and cosmopolitan identities. I am interested in how media professionals working in globalizing contexts go about negotiating and representing various kinds of trans-border and trans-cultural identities and perspectives. My dissertation, The End(s) of Imagination: Nation and Europe at the Television Channel ARTE, examines how staff at ARTE, a self-consciously trans-national and trans-regional television channel, go about crafting media intended to promulgate a trans-border and pan-European culture. The dissertation describes the strategies that producers use in their cultivations of trans-border and cosmopolitan sensibilities, arguing that a variety of such strategies are in evidence, most of which draw upon still-regnant ideas about national belonging and character, but in ways that require us to differentiate among various conceptions of "nation" as either reified and bounded, or as contingent and dynamic.  My next project will explore transnational green politics and media.