*CFP* "FROM CINEMA CULTURE TO CINEMA MEMORY", THREE-DAY CONFERENCE

‘From Cinema Culture to Cinema Memory’

6 - 9 April, 2022

Lancaster University, UK

 

‘From Cinema Culture to Cinema Memory’ is a three-day conference that invites speakers to discuss a range of themes relating to cinema culture and cinema memory. The conference will mark the climax of a 3-year AHRC-funded project, ‘Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive: 1930s Britain and Beyond’ (CMDA). The project gathers together a range of material relating to cinema memory in a comprehensive digital archive, a vast amount of which has been made available to view freely online for the first time. Information on this project can be found here. The relationship between cinema culture and cinema memory is explored in ‘From Cinema Culture to Cinema Memory: a Conceptual and Methodological trajectory’ (Kuhn, upcoming)

Key themes to explored at the conference are:

*CFP* "SUPERHEROES: A COMPANION", BOOK CHAPTER

As media texts show us superheroes from around the world(s), demonstrating extraordinary abilities and living a life shaped by a moral code, how we define their iconic features and cultural impact has been the focus of much scholarly debate.

Superheroes have proliferated and multiplied in the 21st Century, coming to prominence in film, television, and video game industries the same way that their popular narratives had begun to flourish in the comic book industry some eighty years before. Yet, while all of these stories and characters are tethered to these early years of the genre, through iterative retellings, reboots, and cultural readjustments, superheroes have consistently found renewed life in modern and contemporary re-imaginings.

Seen through examples, such as the synergy of “Batmania”, the convergence culture of the MCU, the conglomerate hierarchies that facilitate the Arkham games, or the multi-verse publications that enable spaces for a female Thor or an Afro-Latino Spider-man, superheroes continue to evolve through the conditions of their production and the cultural discourses that they engender. 

*CFP* "EXPLORING MOTHERLY INSTINTICS: REPRESENTATION OF MOTHERS IN INDIAN CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, CAFÉ DISSENSUS JOURNAL

The figure of the mother has always been glorified and depicted in black and white without shades of grey. However, time and again filmmakers and academic thinkers have strived to push this conventional depiction to accommodate various layers associated with the concept of motherhood, as they have sought to challenge the simplistic representation of mothers in popular media. It is important to explore the maternal world further in this highly digitized, globalized and gender-neutral environment.

This proposed issue of Café Dissensus aims to curate a collection of essays on the representation of mothers in films that go beyond the stereotypical portrayal of motherhood as epitomized in the figures of Nirupa Roy and Rakhee Gulzar in conventional Bollywood style, showing unconditional love toward her offspring. 

The proposed issue welcomes submissions on the following themes (though not limited to them):

• Queerness and motherhood 
• Good vs. bad mothers 

*CFP* "DRACONES IN MUNDO: DRAGONS IN LITERATURE, FILM, AND POP CULTURE", A SERIES OF EDITED VOLUMES

As the popularity of mythical creatures in films and literature grows, there is one creature that remains prominent: the dragon. Dragons have become most visible recently in the cinematic versions of The Hobbit and in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones Series). However, there are other films, such as Dragonslayer (1981), Reign of Fire (2002), Dragonheart (1996), and the How to Train Your Dragon series (2010-2019), and numerous adult and children’s literature series that feature dragons.

This call for papers will result in several themed volumes under each of these main headings:

 

Full volume(s):

• Wings, Wonders, and Warriors: Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels

*CFP* "EXPLORING MOTHERLY INSTINCTS: REPRESENTATION OF MOTHERS IN INDIAN CINEMA", PROPOSED ISSUE, CAFÉ DISSENSUS JOURNAL

The figure of the mother has always been glorified and depicted in black and white without shades of grey. However, time and again filmmakers and academic thinkers have strived to push this conventional depiction to accommodate various layers associated with the concept of motherhood, as they have sought to challenge the simplistic representation of mothers in popular media. It is important to explore the maternal world further in this highly digitized, globalized and gender-neutral environment. 

This proposed issue of Café Dissensus aims to curate a collection of essays on the representation of mothers in films that go beyond the stereotypical portrayal of motherhood as epitomized in the figures of Nirupa Roy and Rakhee Gulzar in conventional Bollywood style, showing unconditional love toward her offspring. 

The proposed issue welcomes submissions on the following themes (though not limited to them):

• Queerness and motherhood 
• Good vs. bad mothers 

*CFP* "NATIONHOOD, IDENTITY, AND SPECULATIVE FICTION", BOOKS BEYOND BOUNDARIES CONFERENCE

Books Beyond Boundaries Conference: Nationhood, Identity, and Speculative Fiction

15th-16th January 2021,

Ulster University, Belfast Campus

 

'Culture is the context within which we need to situate the self, for it is only by virtue of the interpretations, orientations and values provided by culture that we can formulate our identities, say ‘who we are’, and ‘where we are coming from’ (Benhabib, 2000:18)

From C.S. Lewis to James Shaw, Northern Irish and Irish fiction is best known for its imagined histories, futures, and alternate realities. However, speculative fiction from writers of colour and ethnic minorities have been notably absent from the literary canon. While the island of Ireland has continued to grow more culturally diverse in the twenty-first century, there has been little engagement with how the cultural identity of Northern Ireland and Ireland has been transformed through immigration.

*CFP* "EPIC AND ICONIC: ESSAYS ON THE WORK, INFLUENCE, AND LEGACY OF ALEX ROSS", BOOK CHAPTER

Nelson Alexander Ross, better known as Alex, has exerted nearly thirty years of profound influence upon sequential art storytelling. Ross emerged into the comics world in the early 1990s with his work on Terminator: Burning Earth, Marvels, and Kingdom Come, immediately establishing his photorealistic style of painting, influenced by Norman Rockwell, Salvador Dali, and Andrew Loomis, among others.

In the years since, Ross has drawn and painted nearly every recognizable character in the Marvel and DC universes, expanded the storytelling capacity of the graphic novel form, and taken home numerous Eisner and Harvey awards. His prolific output can be found across media platforms, from traditional comics to art galleries, from film and television to magazines, toys, and video games.

Given Ross’s substantial and acclaimed level of production, it is no exaggeration to consider him among the most important commercial artists of his generation – and yet, his work has garnered little academic interest. In this collection, we hope to curate the first definitive set of scholarly perspectives on Ross’s creative approach, his interventions into sequential art narrative and aesthetics, and his lasting influences upon popular culture and the creative community.

*CFP* "NATIONALISM AND MEDIA", 31ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM

31st Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN)

5-7 April 2022 in Antwerp (Belgium)

Nationalism and media

 

For as long as nationalist movements have existed, ideological pamphlets, historical novels that constructed a romantic national past to visual arts and hashtags such as #maga on Twitter have instrumentalised media. Next to disseminating explicit nationalist messages, media (printed press and visual arts included) also play a role for nationalism by making national symbols and discourses part of everyday life. By continuously providing representations of the nation and by presenting the world as a world of nations, media help to naturalise nationalism.

Since Karl Deutsch’s Nationalism and social communication (1953/1966), many studies of nationalism and national movements have pointed at the role of media. Most famously, in Imagined Communities (1983), Benedict Anderson emphasized the importance of ‘print capitalism’ in the emergence of modern nations. The growing distribution of newspapers, magazines, books and other print media facilitated language standardisation and literacy and through that to the development of a collective consciousness and the formation of an imagined community.

*CFP* "THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE: A CREATIVE AND CRITICAL SURVIVAL GUIDE", BOOK PROJECT

The Climate Catastrophe: A Creative and Critical Survival Guide is a book project that builds on the ethos of the three (to date) eco_media symposia, in proposing an interdisciplinary response to the various catastrophes – human and nonhuman – currently threatening the planet. The editors of The Climate Catastrophe are posting an open call for chapter proposals. Chapters should address the current climate situation in various ways: some pieces will be critical/theoretical/empirical in nature, where others will recount and describe creative approaches through art, filmmaking, sound design, and photography.

With the circulation of vaccines around the world, we thought we were shifting to a new phase of life after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Delta variant of the virus threatens populations worldwide, plunging millions back into lockdown. The core questions for this publication will thus be: how might we maintain focus on environmental issues, on the ever-present existential threat that predated the chaos of 2020? How has the pandemic changed – and how does it continue to change – our approach to or understanding of our world and our place in it? What creative, theoretical, empirical or philosophical approaches might best help us move forward in innovative and responsible ways?

Topics could include — but are not limited to:

*CFP* "COMUNICAR SOBRE LA CRISIS CLIMÁTICA EN LA ERA COVID-19: CONEXIONES, INNOVACIONES Y NUEVOS RETOS", VOL. 28, Nº 3, REVISTA ESTUDIOS SOBRE EL MENSAJE PERIODÍSTICO

Comunicar adecuadamente el problema climático en una sociedad inmersa en sobreinformación y desinformación presenta no pocas dificultades. Pero también es cierto que, ahora más que nunca, los periodistas cuentan con herramientas de fact checking y con posibilidades de acceso y manejo de big data que abren grandes oportunidades para informar en una época marcada por el uso de plataformas, blogs, redes sociales e interacción con el público.

Los medios de comunicación también tienen mucho que aportar en la promoción de la  Education for Environmental Citizenship (EEC), que busca desarrollar en la ciudadanía las competencias necesarias para lograr una implicación cívica activa y crítica (ENEC, 2018), especialmente por parte de las generaciones más jóvenes. Precisamente The Oslo Metropolitan University ha mostrado su preocupación por llegar mejor a este colectivo, celebrando a finales de 2020 la conferencia Improving Climate Journalism, Engaging the Youth. En ella se debatió sobre cómo debería ser un buen periodismo que informe sobre la crisis climática con rigor científico al tiempo que sea innovador y atractivo para audiencias a las que los medios tradicionales no siempre llegan.

*CFP* "IDENTITY AND OTHERNESS IN FILM", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FILM STUDIES

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, cinema, television, and related media have become increasingly central both to individual lives and to the lives of peoples, groups, and nations. Cinema has become a major form of cultural expression and films both reflect and influence the attitudes and behaviour of people, representing their tensions and anxieties, hopes and desires and incarnating social and cultural determinants of the era in which they were made.

Cinema as a whole has historically offered a rich setting for understanding cultural interaction, however it functions within certain political and ideological limits. It offers fascinating source material for an examination of what, in the modern world, we understand as "otherness", the cinematic "Other" being constructed in terms of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

This conference aims to consider film studies from a variety of critical, theoretical, and analytical approaches and to focus on how "self-other" relations are represented.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

*CFP* "USEFUL FILM IN (NEURO) PSYCHIATRY EUROPE, 1900-1950", WORKSHOP

Workshop “Useful Film in (Neuro) Psychiatry Europe, 1900–1950”

University of Lausanne 3-4 March 2022

This workshop is organized in the framework of the SNSF project Cinéma et (neuro)psychiatrie en Suisse: autour de la collection Waldau, 1920-1990

 

Since its inception, the cinematograph had many applications in the medical field, and particularly in the fields of psychiatry, neurology and neuropsychiatry. With surgeons, neurologists and psychiatrists are at the forefront of using film as a tool for analyzing, storing, archiving, and transmitting knowledge. For a long time, the (neuro) psychiatric films made by doctors as part of their teaching and research have been overshadowed by educational and health films. But since 2000, and especially 2010, scholars from different disciplines are increasingly interested in these practices. Several interdisciplinary teams have conducted research, with the aim of rehabilitating film as a privileged source for both the history of medicine and the history of cinema.

*CFP* LLAMADA A PARTICIPACIÓN, III CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE COMUNICACIÓN Y REDES EN LA SOCIEDAD DE LA INFORMACIÓN

III Congreso Internacional de Comunicación y Redes en la Sociedad de la Información

Universidad de Salamanca

3 y 4 de marzo de 2022 (presencial)

 

El impacto de las redes sociales ha continuado creciendo de forma espectacular en la última década, tanto en número de usuarios y tiempo invertido en ellas, como en los ingresos obtenidos. El fenómeno de las redes sociales está cobrando aún más importancia gracias a la posibilidad de acceso a través de la banda ancha móvil, mediante aplicaciones para dispositivos móviles. Ambos fenómenos se retroalimentan y configuran un binomio de éxito dentro de la Sociedad de la Información.

Los usuarios de las redes sociales tienen ahora la capacidad de conectarse, opinar, seguir a sus amigos, informar, etc., en tiempo real. El acceso a las redes sociales en movilidad aporta un valor añadido al propio servicio, ya que el usuario está siempre conectado y puede interactuar en todo momento, independientemente del lugar en el que se encuentre.