Creative cities, PR nations, celebrity diplomacy, Hype Machine, branded philanthropy, YouTube identities....
These are both symptoms and effects of what Andrew Wernick termed "promotional culture": the extension of promotional discourses, practices and performances into virtually all areas of public life.

What is at stake in these contemporary promotional paradigms? The interpenetration of public and private interests, techniques and expertise creates new anxieties and demands new forms of analysis. Some scholars have pointed to the closure of the public sphere and the rise of image management in a thoroughly mediated environment; others chart the "neoliberal nationalism" of market-led governance and a generalized crisis of value in the context of "mirage" economies; still others index the evolution of the "competitive personality" in the ongoing other-directedness of the self. Though relations of power cannot be denied, we find labels of "propaganda," "manipulation" and "spin control" to be unproductive concepts in accounting for the function and impact of promotional communication in the current social, political and technological context.

The goal of this two-day conference is to develop a set of productive critical perspectives on promotion in relation to contemporary culture. We seek to assemble creative and interdisciplinary frameworks to identify common themes and disjunctures inherent to these forms of communication. At issue is the changing role of the consumer-citizen-user in contemporary life.

Blowing Up the Brand is open to the public. Please bring a photo ID.

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• Devon Powers
• Assistant Professor of Culture and Communication | Drexel University
• Melissa Aronczyk
• Adjunct Instructor, Media, Culture, and Communication | New York University

• Rob Walker
• "Consumed" columnist for The New York Times Magazine and author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Random House, 2008)

• Paula Chakravartty
• Associate Professor of Communication | University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• John Corner
• Professor of Politics and Communication | University of Leeds
• Arlene Davila
• Associate Professor of Anthropology, Social and Cultural Analysis | New York University
• Mary Ebeling
• Assistant Professor, Culture & Communication | Drexel University
• Jonathan Gray
• Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies | Fordham University
• Miriam Greenberg
• Assistant Professor of Sociology | University of California, Santa Cruz
• Graham Knight
• Professor and Chair, Communication Studies and Multimedia | McMaster University in Canada
• Celia Lury
• Professor of Sociology | Goldsmiths, University of London
• Jeff Pooley
• Assistant Professor of Media and Communication | Muhlenberg College
• Marita Sturken
• Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication | New York University