Category D: A Film and Media Studies Blog

However the SCMS election turns out, I second wholeheartedly Maria Pramaggiore's suggestion to "explore the possibility of sponsoring small, 1-day conferences in diverse locations, organized by caucuses or SIGs, to expand the opportunities for networking around specific research interests." I've mentioned on Twitter how impressed I am by the number and scope of topical conferences in the UK. Those in the US have trickled down to at times negligible numbers. I'm not sure exactly what's driving the trend here, but I think the discipline is poorer for it.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Book Collection: Cinephilia and Teaching
Editors: Rashna Wadia Richards and David T. Johnson
Abstract Deadline: June 1, 2013

We invite contributions to Cinephilia and Teaching, an edited collection of essays clustered around ideas of cinephilia and pedagogy. While essays may explicitly interrogate connections between ciné-love and teaching, we envision a collection that explores both concepts broadly, creating a productive dialogue between cinephilia and education, a long-neglected relationship in Film Studies.

In the introduction to their 2012 MLA collection Teaching Film, Lucy Fischer and Patrice Petro describe a central tension that characterizes the field: while Film Studies appears to belong to "the advanced guard—at times leading the way in the humanities," it "still suffers from a certain lack of recognition and its attendant deprivations." Such ambivalence is often reflected in the field's own attitude toward its subjects, and few sites…

CALL FOR PAPERS

European Film Cultures: An International Conference
8-9 November 2013, Lund University, Sweden

ECREA Film Studies Section Interim Conference

The study of film as culture and of filmcultures has been an expanding area of study in recent years. The aim of this two-day conference is to focus on the most recent developments anddiscussdifferent ways of analyzing film in cultural contexts, as well as film as a cultural product, with the aim to debatehow different methodologies and perspectives can inspire each other in productive ways.

The European film industry is currently undergoing profound transformations on account of important economic, technological and cultural reasons. The internationalization of markets, the impact of the digital revolution, the repositioning of Europe on the global scene are some of the factors that currently impact on ideas and practices of European cinema.

The centrality of film to European cultures is both reaffirmed today and challenged by th…

CALL FOR PAPERS

Slow Cinema
Editors: Nuno Barradas Jorge, Tiago de Luca

Over the last decade, a cinematic trend characterized by aesthetic minimalism and slow tempo has made its mark on the world cinema map. Although directors such as Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang, Béla Tarr, Pedro Costa and Lisandro Alonso, among others, do not pertain to a cohesive film movement, their films have been largely subsumed under the term ‘Slow Cinema’.

And yet, what exactly is Slow Cinema? While its presence in international film festivals continues to gain prominence worldwide, the term has too often been examined within the framework of a binary model that simply places it against the ‘intensified’ Hollywood style (Bordwell). With a view to rethinking its validity beyond dual systems and reductive binarisms (Nagib), this collection seeks to reposition Slow Cinema in a more expansive discursive and theoretical terrain. How can we productively understand this cinematic expression as inserted within div…

A call for submissions for an edited collection of essays on contemporary uses of fairy tales in popular culture.

The collection will focus on recent reinterpretations and reboots of classical fairy tales, ways the contemporary texts address the original tales and narratological implications of the repetitions and adjustments of these stories. In essays that explore the functions and consequences of fairy tale reboots, remakes and updates, authors will consider the ways fairy tale generic conventions have been revised over time, representations of race, gender, class and sexual identity, the roles of archetypes, mythic tropes and patterns and the emergence of self-referential and meta-tales within these texts.

Essays may also address fan culture influence on contemporary tales, opportunities for interactivity and the roles of stars in fairy tale reboots.

Text focus could include television series, feature-length films, comic books and graphic novels, games and animation. Possible…