CFP: 2013 Screen conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

Screen Studies Conference
28-30 June 2013
University of Glasgow

Plenary theme: "Cosmopolitan Screens"

The 23rd International Screen Studies Conference, organised by the journal Screen, will be programmed by Screen editors Tim Bergfelder, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Alastair Phillips and Jackie Stacey.

Debates about the national, the transnational, the global and the multi-cultural have permeated screen studies for decades. The main theme of this year's Screen conference will consider how such debates might be reframed through a serious engagement with theories of cosmopolitanism. How might discussions about cosmopolitanism, currently animating subjects across the humanities and social sciences, speak to scholarship in film and television studies and vice versa?

Literally suggesting a combination of worldliness (cosmos) and place (city, city-state, citizenship - polis), the concept of cosmopolitanism has inspired new political visions post 9/11 and its aftermath. Recently taken up as a lens through which to discuss the ethics of encountering strangers, the politics of offering hospitality to foreigners and the problem of challenging aversion to otherness, cosmopolitanism has also come under attack for its perceived complicity with global hegemonies.

If screen studies have been slow to take up the cosmopolitan question directly, it is perhaps because audiovisual media have been so deeply embedded within transnational and globalising cultures from their earliest beginnings. But is there something particular to film, television and new media cultures that might speak directly to the problems at the heart of the current cosmopolitan project? How might we understand the changing significance of film and television through a cosmopolitan lens? The editors of Screen welcome proposals for papers/panels on any of these questions and on the following topics of the main conference theme (proposals for other subjects beyond this focus will as usual be considered):

  • Conceptual and methodological interrogations of cosmopolitanism from perspectives within screen studies, most especially connecting to ethics, politics, philosophy and the law; 
  • Explorations of screen cultures through debates about the relationship between cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, globalisation, multiculturalism and 'world cinema'; 
  • Cosmopolitan spaces of circulation (exhibition, distribution, new platforms of delivery); 
  • Cosmopolitan aesthetics and spectatorship (how might this be understood and theorised?); 
  • Cosmopolitan positions - how are film and television makers and audiences positioned in relation to the production and circulation of their work? 

The deadline for submitting proposals is Friday, 11 January 2013. Visit the conference website for more details and to download proposal template.

Comments

Popular Posts