Cover for Utopia, a British thriller drama TV series (2013-14)
Exciting news for those interested in cultural and media audience research—Participations, a journal of audience and reception studies, has a new online home! Ernest Mathijs, Professor in Film and Media Studies, is part of the core board and has been hard at work on the development of the brand-new website.
Participations is focused on developing the broad field of study of cultural and media audiences. As well as being an academic journal, its purpose is also to provide a space for researchers interested in the field to come together. With its updated platform and expert board members, the journal promises to continue as a valuable resource for graduate and postgraduate researchers seeking to understand how movies, shows and media are received by audiences.
The website contains details on how to submit research to the journal (it is open-peer reviewed, and freely accessible) and published articles are available to be viewed as well. “Fugitive cult receptions of conspiracy thriller Utopia”, a recent article by Ernest Mathijs is an interesting example of the type of research being published by Participations. The article explores the relationship between “fugitive receptions” and excessive audience engagement with the cult television series Utopia.
Ernest Mathijs
Ernest Mathijs is a Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of British Columbia. He researches cult film, genre cinema, David Cronenberg, and European horror. He has written on the reception of digital cinema and fantasy (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), on Belgian cinema, reality-TV Big Brother, Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Beuys, The Room, and on the activism and acting of Delphine Seyrig.
His most recent book is The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema (co-edited with Jamie Sexton). He has also published 100 Cult Films, Cult Cinema, The Cult Film Reader, and Alternative Europe, amongst others. He is the author of monographs on David Cronenberg and Ginger Snaps.
Ernest is the co-producer and co-writer of the two-part documentary The Quiet Revolution (2019), on Canadian genre film since the 1970s. He chairs the editorial board of the online journal Participations and an associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. He is obsessed with the question ‘how long is a moment?’.
