*CFP* "THE FROZEN PHENOMENON", EDITED ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION

The record-breaking release of Frozen in 2013 marked a shift in the American animation industry and the Walt Disney Company as a whole. The film has been elevated as a catalyst for the third “golden age” for Walt Disney Animation Studios, restoring the company’s brand identity and ushering it into a new phase. It has also been praised for its pedagogical promise of change and reform of the Disney princess franchise, marking the start of an era characterized by strong, independent female leads that evolve around “richer, more complex stories” (Harris, 2016). Popular critics have lauded the film for improving Disney’s gender role portrayal and for providing role models that are more empowering and realistic for young women – or what American educational scholar Cole Reilly has labelled “an encouraging evolution among the Disney Princesses” (2016, 60). 

The exchange of the traditional heterosexual fairy-tale romance for sisterly love was at the time unprecedented. Finally, from a business perspective, Frozen has set new standards for branding and merchandizing of the film's universe, music and popular characters. As the 10th anniversary of the film's premiere approaches, Frozen remains one of the most loved, recognizable, and marketed Disney films to date. Its enormous exposure and popularity calls for an exploration of itsinfluence on mainstream animation and on contemporary popular culture and society as a whole.

*CFP* "A CELEBRATION OF SUPERHEROES", DEPAUL POP CULTURE 2021 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

DePaul Pop Culture Conference

A Celebration of Superheroes

1st of May, 2021

Virtual

 

After postponing for a year, we are now re-accepting submissions for the eighth Pop Culture Conference, hosted by DePaul University! This year’s “Celebration of Superheroes” will take place synchronously for Keynotes, Workshops, and Roundtables on May 01, 2021 and asynchronously for panels throughout the following week. More details can be found at the website.

This event will feature roundtable discussions from scholars and fans of Superheroes and comics. Our keynote speaker is Sarah Kuhn, author of the popular Heroine Complex novels—a series starring Asian American superheroines, as well as I Love You So Mochi and a graphic novel about Batgirl Cassandra Cain for DC Comics.

*CFP* "'AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER' AND 'THE LEGEND OF JORRA'", BOOK CHAPTER

Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08) and its sequel The Legend of Korra (2012-14) are among the most acclaimed and influential animated television series of the twenty-first century. Yet, there has been little scholarly writing about them. To remedy this gap, I am looking for contributors for an edited volume of essays on this franchise.

The book will be designed for a general undergraduate readership, covering a range of topics in relation to the Avatar franchise. These include (but are not limited to):

• Depictions of race and ethnicity (esp. of Asian and Indigenous peoples), gender, and sexuality 
• Use of character design, storyboarding, voice acting, music, etc. 
• Issues regarding nationality, transnationality, and cultural appropriation 
• Depictions of violence, imperialism, and trauma 
• Genre (e.g. kung fu films, fantasy, and anime) 
• Fandom and fanworks (e.g. Racebending.com, shipping, cosplay, etc.) 
• Adaptation and franchise

*CFP* "RHETORIC OF ECOLOGY IN VISUAL CULTURE", VOL. 8, Nº 2 (2021), RES RHETORICA JOURNAL

“There is no PLANet B,” reads the inscription on a cardboard poster held by the organizers of the 3rd Kraków Green Film Festival to be held on August 13-23, 2020. The great popularity of this international festival proves the importance of the issues raised by the filmmakers who are "focused at improving the culture of life in accordance with the «green» values." The films presented at the festival (available also online) might be one of many widely available inspirations for the analysis of the visual rhetoric encompassing the textuality of ecology. The trio of the key terms which bind the topic together are: Visuality/Ecology/Rhetoric.

The aim of the issue of Res Rhetorica on Rhetoric of Ecology in Visual Culture is to provide different critical perspectives on the persuasive power of images in environmental and ecological rhetoric. As Heather Dawkins observes in Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature (2009, 91), the complex scripto-visual strategies can be used “to construct affective resonance, […] to demonstrate ideas, to define the good, to persuade and to propose action” and, as such, the images – whether they are still images (photographs, paintings and posters) or motion pictures (films and other related media) – have “taken their place as intrinsic rhetorical structures in environmental rhetoric” (Dawkins 2009, 91).

*CFP* "REPRESENTATIONS AS WEAPONS: CULT FILM AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE", THE 14TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL ON GLOBAL CULT FILM TRADITIONS

Cine-Excess: The 14th International Conference and Festival on Global Cult Film Traditions

Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. 

5th- 7th November 2020 

(Online).

Cine-Excess 14, in association with Birmingham City University and the Black Sands Educational Project, features an online academic conference, alongside film industry panels and a streamed film festival season of related UK premieres and retrospectives. A Panel of international filmmakers discussing the theme of ‘Representations as Weapons’ will be announced in late July.

Previous guests of honour attending Cine-Excess have included Jen & Sylvia Soska (American Mary, Rabid [2019]), Norman J. Warren (Prey, Terror), Victoria Price (Author of Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography), Pete Walker (Frightmare and House of the Long Shadows), Catherine Breillat (Romance, Sex is Comedy), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death, The Wild Angels), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, King of the Ants), Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist), Dario Argento (Deep Red, Suspiria), Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins), Franco Nero (Django, Keoma, Die Hard II), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, The Devils), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, House on the Edge of the Park), Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma, The Inglorious Basts), Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colours of the Dark), Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and Pat Mills (Action Magazine, 2000 AD).

*CFP* "THE JURASSIC PARK BOOK", EDITED COLLECTION

Proposals are invited for contributions to a proposed edited collection of new essays on Jurassic Park (1993), its sequels, franchise, and spin offs.

Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) took over $50 million dollars in its opening weekend and went on to gross over $1 billion worldwide at the box office.  One of the definitive Hollywood blockbusters, Jurassic Park met with almost universal critical and popular acclaim, broke new ground with its CGI recreation of dinosaurs, and started one of the most profitable of all movie franchises.

To mark the film’s 30th anniversary, this collection aims to interrogate the Jurassic Park phenomenon from a diverse range of critical, historical, and theoretical angles.  Proposals are especially sought for 6 – 7000 word chapters on gender, race, and colonialism; international distribution, marketing, reception and audiences; merchandising, toys, video games and other spin offs; CGI, SFX, film form and production design (cinematography, editing, sound, music etc.).

*CFP* "EXTREME 21: GOING IN POST-MILLENNIAL NORTH-AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE", EXRE(Y) 2020

ExRe(y) 2020 - ExtReme 21: Going Beyond in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Culture

Lublin, Poland

Organization: Maria Curie Sklodowska University

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Prof. Andrea O'Reilly Herrera (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO, USA)

Prof. Aneta Dybska (University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland)

Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University is pleased to announce the third ExRe(y) conference. A three-day international conference “ExtReme 21: Going Beyond in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Culture” will be held on June 4-6, 2020 in Lublin, Poland.

We invite proposals for papers and panels that focus on the topic of the (broadly understood) extreme in American and Canadian literature and culture of the last two decades.

*CFP* "KEANU REEVES", SPECIAL ISSUE, CELEBRITY STUDIES JOURNAL

Keanu Reeves. Since his emergence as a teen actor in the 1980s, Keanu Reeves has been an enduring, yet elusive celebrity who continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. Despite his unwavering popularity, in recent years his lower public profile has seen Reeves assume the status of cult or folk icon; yet slowly the world appears to have fallen for Reeves all over again. USA Today declared June 2019 ‘The Summer of Keanu Reeves’ with the release of John Wick 3, Toy Story 4, the announcement of his role in X Box game Cyberpunk 2077, memorable cameo in Always Be My Maybe, memes, magazine features, the first ‘KeanuCon’ film festival, and high profile fashion brand ambassador spreads (Saint Laurent). With the latest instalment of Bill and Ted (Bill and Ted Face the Music) due for release in 2020, this special issue of Celebrity Studies will be a timely exploration of the resurgent Reeves in the transmedia age.

Often discussed as an emblematic star of 1990s postmodernist cinema and queer sensibilities with a liminal, endless screen presence that stood between the margins and the mainstream of contemporary filmic texts (c.f. Giarrantana, 2002 and Rutsky, 2001), even now twenty years on from The Matrix (1999), Reeves remains an enigmatic icon straddling boundaries of fixed identity and meaning. His 21st century stardom has extended beyond the Wachowski’s ground-breaking series and his other key roles of the 1990s, and Reeves’ performances and star persona continues to reflect the wider ages and identities he lives through, endlessly being rewritten, rebooted and reinterpreted.

*CFP* "GERIACTION CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION

The action film has been widely analysed for its investment in spectacle, its hyperbolic masculinity, its significance for film marketing and its ideological implications across various conflicts and contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. So too have its stars been extensively framed in their cultural-political surroundings over recent decades of film scholarship. As the action-adventure format’s most contemporary manifestation in the blockbuster era reaches middle age and late-adulthood, and the personae of Cold-War era action stars increasingly adapt to incorporate themes of ageing, debates around seniority in the genre’s marquee personnel are ever more timely. As cinema as a whole is increasingly globalised, we are keen to expand the definitions and understandings of ageing, stardom, gender and genre in more transnational and multicultural contexts.

The Journal of Popular Film and Television will explore these ideas in a special themed issue focusing on the notion of ‘Geriaction cinema’. The issue will offer scholars the opportunity to discuss the concept of the ageing action star across historical periods, genders, ethnicities and national cinemas, bringing together diverse perspectives on the historical and political coordinates of this enduring genre. We are especially keen to encourage scholars looking at stars from outside Hollywood and Europe, so we have a particular interest in papers that heighten the international and multicultural approach to the genre. With female-centred action films becoming more mainstream, we are also particularly keen on papers that explore the female action star (Michelle Rodriguez, Angelina Jolie). 

*CFP* CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES WAN, CHAPTER BOOK

Critical essays are sought on the cinema of Malaysian/Australian director, screenwriter and producer James Wan. As 2018 marks Wan’s first incursion into superhero cinema with Aquaman, a film that reportedly is DC Films’ biggest worldwide grosser, critical attention on the director keeps intensifying. With huge critical and box office successes such as Saw (2004), a film that kickstarted a whole franchise, The Conjuring I and II (2013 and 2016), films that started a whole filmic universe, together with Death Sentence (2007), Insidious I and II (2010 and 2013), Furious 7 (2015) and Dead Silence (2007), it can be argued that we are facing a new Hollywood auteur with an identity of his own.

Still, there is a striking lack of critical studies on the works of James Wan, even when he has been responsible of some of the most interesting blockbusters of the last few years.

Creating for the new millennium a form of film horror that relies more on atmosphere than in jump scares a kind of dread almost extinct at the big screen since the times of director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton? Wan has imposed a uniquely rich style and vision which does not reject the commercial and the genre formula but in fact embraces it. His efforts as producer follow this marked interest in genre, franchise and remake, both in film (Lights Out 2016; Annabelle: Creation 2017, The Curse of La Llorona 2019­) as in TV (MacGyver; Swamp Thing).

*CFP* "CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION FILM: THE BUSH, OBAMA AND TRUMP YEARS", ESSAYS COLLECTION

Since the turn of the millennium the United States of America has undergone what many have considered to be a series of political, financial, and institutional crises. At the same time, the increasing popularity of the science fiction genre has, in many ways, frequently both dramatized and provided a commentary on the fears and anxieties this period has evoked. The philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin argued that allegory emerges most frequently in periods of crisis and uncertainty, correspondingly it is no coincidence that some of the most powerful films to emerge from American cinema in the last two decades are allegorical texts and many of which have come from the science fiction genre. What are they able to tell us about the turbulent times in which they were made? How might they be uniquely positioned to function as cultural artefacts intrinsically connected to their historical moments? How do the fears and anxieties they portray resonate beyond the frames of the screens?

With this in mind we are seeking scholarly, research informed and dynamic chapter-length contributions to an edited volume on the topic of the contemporary science-fiction genre in American film. This collection of essays will examine and explore how recent films have reflected, portrayed and interrogated the social, political and cultural climate of this fractious period during the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

6ª SESIÓN SEMINARIO DOIMECO, "PLANET HALLYUWOOD: LA INDUSTRIA CINEMATOGRÁFICA DE COREA DEL SUR EN LA ERA DE LA GLOBALIZACIÓN"

*CFP* "40 YEARS OF ALIEN", ACADEMIC SYMPOSIUM, CENTRE FOR FILM, TELEVISION AND SCREEN STUDIES, BANGOR UNIVERSITY UK

An academic symposium hosted by The Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bangor University, UK. Friday 24 May 2019.

Alien has left an indelible mark on popular culture. Conceived primarily to cash in on the popularity of science-fiction films in the late 1970s, directed by a person known for making adverts (Ridley Scott) and starring an unknown actor in the lead role (Sigourney Weaver), it transcended its humble origins to frighten and disturb audiences on its initial release. Its success has led to three direct sequels, two prequels, one ‘mashup’ franchise, a series of comic books, graphic novels, novelisations and games, and has an enormous and devoted fanbase. For forty years, Alien (and its progeny) has animated debate and discussion among critics and academics from a wide variety of disciplines and methodological perspectives.

Hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University, this symposium proposes to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore Alien forty years since its release, debate its legacy and consider its position within visual culture.