*CFP* "ANIMALS IN THE CINEMA", THE CINE-FILES

The Cine-Files, an online journal of cinema scholarship, is now accepting submissions for its Fall 2018 special issue on "Animals in the Cinema" that will be edited by Catherine Grant and Tracy Cox-Stanton. 

Since John Berger’s 1991 essay “Why Look at Animals?” studies of animals in visual culture have steadily advanced, culminating in the 2015 anthology Animal Life and the Moving Image (BFI, Michael Lawrence and Laura McMahon, editors).  In this work, scholars employ a diversity of theoretical frameworks to extend many of the insights of animal studies into the terrain of film and media studies.  Issue 14 of The Cine-Files seeks to build on that work, inviting scholars to contemplate the significance of animals in a variety of audiovisual media.

Papers might consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How do particular films or videos convey or complicate recent scholarly work about the sentience of non-human animals? 
• What can we learn from an analysis of films that feature animal performers? How does the non-human animal performer complicate our views of film performance? 
• How might we understand the proliferation of online animal videos within the context of anthropogenic climate change and threats of “the sixth extinction”? 
• What role did animals play in early cinema’s era of “attractions,” and how can an understanding of that era help us contextualize contemporary representations? 
• How can we better understand and historicize “the colonialist trope of animalization” (identified in Unthinking Eurocentrism)—aligning non-human animals with human “others” including racial and/or ethnic minorities, as well as women, LGBTQI and others? 
• How has CGI affected the cinematic figuration of animals? 
• How has the depiction of animals prompted particularly innovative uses of cinematic language? 
• Is it possible to depict animals in a way that is not “anthropomorphic?” How have particular films challenged anthropomorphic representation?

We seek submissions for scholarly essays (4000-6000 words) that explore the significance of non-human animals in moving image studies.  These essays will comprise the peer-reviewed, “featured scholarship” portion of issue 14.

Please email your essay as a MS Word doc to the editors, removing your identifying information from the essay.  On a separate page, include your name, essay title, brief biographical note, and email address. Consult the guidelines for submissions.

Deadline for submissions: July 30, 2018

The Cine-Files, Issue 14 (Fall 2018)

If you would like to submit a video essay for consideration, please contact the editors by email to discuss your idea in the first instance. July 30 will also be the date for submissions in this mode.

Catherine Grant, catherine.grant1@bbk.ac.uk

Tracy Cox-Stanton, editor@thecine-files.com