*CFP* "MOB CENSORSHIP AND DIGITAL VIOLENCE AGAINST THE PRESS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE", SPECIAL ISSUE, JOURNAL OF DIGITAL JOURNALISM

Online violence against journalists is a global phenomenon. Recent studies have documented patterns suggesting that specific groups of journalists defined by gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and religion, are likely targets of digital harassment, doxing and other forms of violence. Violence is perpetrated by ordinary citizens, states, and para-state actors. This special issue focuses on mob censorship in digital spaces against journalists and the press. Mob censorship is understood as violence exercised by ordinary citizens against journalists with the intention to intimidate and silence the press. The study of mob censorship sheds light into the patterns, the causes, and the effects of violence against journalism and the right of expression of citizens in the digital society. As expression has become more abundant through digital platforms, so has violence against journalists and other actors with visible, prominent positions in the public sphere.

The aim of the special issue is to contribute novel empirical findings and theoretical and conceptual innovations in the study of digital violence against the press, as well as to provide recommendations for addressing the problem. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions from around the world that address questions in the areas of mob censorship, digital hate and journalism, anti-press violence, freedom of expression, and journalistic safety. Studies grounded in various theoretical frameworks and that use different research designs and methodologies are welcome. Comparative, cross-national perspectives might be particularly useful to comprehend causes and manifestations of mob censorship in different political regimes and information contexts.

*CFP* "QUEER VISUALS: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND INDIAN CINEMA", BOOK CHAPTER

How society represents its gender and sexual minorities, and whether the visual media should, at all, bear the responsibility of fair and equal representation, form two crucial discourses for a broader discussion in the field of gender studies at present. While ancient Indian society treated sexuality as a fluid concept, homosexuality eventually acquired the label of being a sin or crime primarily during the British Raj. However, the Indian society, as a whole, attempted to engage in constant historical, social and political struggles, the result of which was the decriminalization of the Act 377 terming it as ‘unconstitutional’ in 2018 by the Supreme Court of India. In the post-independent era, the cultural representation of gender identities had undergone a drastic transformation in various forms of visual media. Indian Cinema, one of the most common and easily accessible mediums of entertainment to the common mass, represented gender discourses not only through its stories, but also the songs that it incorporated and which served very much to forward the narrative of the plot, unlike its Western counterpart.

While commercial Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood, has come a long way in its depiction of diversified gender identities, the stereotypes of comical relief and voyeurism still remain its dominant feature. Since songs play a crucial role in facilitating the narrative of the plot, the lyrics used also form a crucial space for critical investigation in the field of gender studies, and to understand in what ways Hindi songs uphold or subvert traditional gender roles. Though in non-Hindi Indian cinema, gender representation in commercial films and songs has often paralleled their Hindi counterparts, there has often been acclaimed efforts by Indian filmmakers who handled the subject and presented the story with a sense of ingenuity, along with sensitivity and sincerity, thus making a mark of socio-cultural significance. 

*CFP* "MEDIA AND CREATIVITY", INTERNATIONAL ONLINE CONFERENCE

“Media and Creativity” International Conference

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (online)

2021-11-27 to 2021-11-28

 

Nowadays we live and breathe media, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. News, television, social media, celebrity culture, music, and more. As the media and communication sector becomes ever more diverse and dynamic, and we are going to consume it, we also need to understand it.

Today, the new bio-technical forms of life produced by mainstream digital media and by a whole range of artistic and non-artistic practices confront us with unprecedented theoretical questions, which can be dealt with by combining profound and perplexing perspectives. We need appropriate theoretical frameworks in order to understand the phenomena.

*CFP* "HAMILTON AND THE POETICS OF AMERICA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES

For those following the course of its reception since its premiere in 2015, there is little doubt that Hamilton: An American Musical is not just theatre. Rather, it is a cultural phenomenon embedded in America’s efforts to make sense of a national selfhood in crisis and an increasingly beleaguered image. The way Hamilton has reflected, fed into and off these efforts does not have to do only with the musical as “self-contained” work of art. Perhaps most importantly, it correlates with how the work has been negotiated in the realm of popular culture and beyond. Hence the main premise of this issue of the European Journal of American Studies: how Hamilton has been talked and written about, the remarkable range of response it has attracted within America, and throughout America’s geocultural ambit, signposts processes of fathoming America’s shifting poetics; that is, the intricate ensemble of meaning-making tools and concepts by which the functioning of contemporary American culture can be accessed and assessed.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius behind the musical, approached Hamilton as a liminal mythic figure, and thus as a cultural text of distributed authorship. Hamilton the work can be construed as an instantiation of Hamilton the myth, a thread woven in the mythic matrix of America’s beginnings. As an instance of reception that has itself been generatively received to the point of becoming a cultural phenomenon, Hamilton arguably betrays more about the context from which it sprang than about the primary mythical material itself. Although it gestures back to the past, it also resonantly speaks to its (our) own present.

*CFP* "LANGUAGE IN ROMANIAN CINEMA", SPECIAL ISSUE, EAST EUROPEAN BULLETIN

As part of its 2021 regional focus on Romanian cinema, the East European Film Bulletin is preparing a special issue on language in Romanian cinema. How do cinematographers and directors work together to create meaning through visual signals?

We are looking for contributions both about language in the linguistic sense and about film language. The two themes our special issue thus aims to bring together are 1) how human language is rendered onscreen, and 2) how the film language employed in films can be analyzed from a linguistic perspective.

We are interested in essays which focus on Romanian productions, filmmakers and styles. Suggested topics and themes:

• the use of irony and metaphor in circumventing Communist-era censorship 
• the translation and incorporation of written texts onscreen (cf. Radu Jude’s work) 
• how speech and language have been used in the films of the Romanian New Wave to mark and reflect political, social and generational divides 

*CFP* "EAST ASIAN FILM REMAKES", BOOK CHAPTER

As the editors of a proposed addition to Edinburgh University Press’ newly launched “Screen Serialities” series, we are seeking abstracts for chapters that explore East Asian film remakes.

Over the past three decades, the subject of cinematic remakes has emerged as a major subdiscipline in film studies, giving rise to a host of critical, philosophical, and theoretical approaches that highlight the historical significance of iterative storytelling within and across different national contexts. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Daniel Herbert, Kathleen Loock, Claire Perkins, Constantine Verevis, and other scholars who are drawn to the remake’s contradictory appeals and intertextual complexities, this long-disparaged category of filmmaking — once brushed off by critics as little more than a derivative copy or pale imitation of an original text — is now recognized as a legitimate cultural form in its own right, one that aesthetically reframes the distant or recent past while providing a paradoxically nostalgic vantage on modern-day issues. Indeed, with so many published studies of remakes currently available, it would seem that very little remains to be said about a topic that is already brimming with taxonomies and terminology unique to this most “bankable” and pervasive type of cultural production.

*CFP* "FAKE NEWS AND AUTHENTICITY", INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERECE

Fake News and Authenticity - International Interdisciplinary Conference

Online Conference

2021-05-20 to 2021-05-21

 

Since the postmodern movements such as pop and hyperrealist art or literary genres? new journalism and creative non-fiction – questioned the status of the real and the imitated, the concept of authenticity has called for a constant reevaluation. Walter Benjamin’s 1935 assumption that “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” has been called into question with the corporate and advertising practice continually rebranding the concept of authenticity to suit mass consumers’ needs. Why is it then that within the contemporary culture the notion of authenticity is still heavily linked with spiritual awakening and happiness? To what extent do authenticity and individuality function as mere commercial products and advertising slogans? Have they over time become shallow romantic ideals or do they still hold the substance to be discovered and implemented into one’s line of thinking and living? What makes authenticity creatively attractive to artists, thinkers and spiritual teachers? Can authenticity be defined, measured, conceptualized in the contemporary context of relativism? Is it at all possible to separate truth from untruth in the world of fake news?

*CFP* "'THE CINEMATOGRAPHIC STARDOM IN SPAIN': ACTRESSES UNDER FRANCOISM", I INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS

I International Congress

"The cinematographic stardom in Spain": Actresses under Francoism

Online edition, May 25 - 27th 2021

 

The I International Congress "The cinematographic stardom in Spain": Actresses under Francoism intends to open a way of thinking upon the cinematographic star-system in Spain, and, particularly, upon the actresses' role during Franco's dictatorship. This initiative is part of the research project Representations of Female Desire in Spanish Cinema during Francoism: The Gestural Evolution of the Actress under Censorship (Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, REF: CSO2017-83083-P). To this extent, the aim is to gather specialists in Spanish cinema history and the Star Studies methodologies to think about the role of the female stars during Francoism concerning the behaviours that the regime had established for women. We are interested in the normative models, as much as possible contradictions, transgressions, and alternatives inside the industry itself generated by the actresses on and off the screen. Moreover, we are interested, mainly, in the possible elements of creative subjectivity that actresses played in the configuration of their roles as stars and constructing the characters they played.

*CFP* "MEDIA AND THE FAR-RIGHT", SPECIAL EDITION, FOR(E)DIALOGUE JOURNAL

In recent years, there has been a clear increase in the dissemination of exclusionary discourses in the public sphere worldwide, articulated in part by prominent figures on the right and far-right wings of international politics. Given the appetite for these ideas, evident from the widespread rise of conservative and populist values in society and the numerous voters opting for far-right political parties in Europe and beyond, many politicians and activists have adopted an openly hostile stance against minorities, challenging minority rights and championing restrictive social policies. Established news media outlets have a complex relationship with far-right and radical actors, often contributing to the mainstreaming of said actors and their beliefs, despite ostensibly adopting critical stances against them. Far-right actors have attacked the credibility of these mainstream media outlets and networks, gravitating increasingly towards alternative ‘news outlets’, such as websites, blogs, forums and social media platforms. At the same time, for over two decades, far-right actors and groups have utilised online communication structures to build their networks, gain visibility, recruit members and spread mis/disinformation through channels that are almost impossible to trace, audit or moderate. The mobilisation of Trump supporters in recent months is one example of this, with radicalisation and organisation taking place via forums, messaging services, and a variety of extremist websites and online spaces, culminating in a violent assault on the US Capitol.

*CFP* "GLOBAL JAMES BOND", CHAPTER BOOK

According to David Bordwell in Planet Hong Kong (2000), “a truly global cinema is one that claims significant space” in film markets around the world (82) beyond a film series (e.g. IP Man), cycle (e.g. kung fu craze of the 1970s), or era (e.g. “golden age” of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 1990s). While Hollywood is the only industry that meets this narrow definition, we question if a partial exception or even expanded demarcation could be made for the James Bond franchise given its long-term popularity, widespread cinematic influence, revenue generation, and cultural viability for nearly 6 decades or half of cinematic history.

As the Bond films have been released in more and more markets, the franchise has increasingly relied on audiences outside of the UK and US (such as China) for the majority of its box-office revenue. This was most evident when MGM contemplated releasing No Time To Die in November 2020 even as the cinemas of the UK and US were closing in response to the coronavirus pandemic. When additional countries began imposing restrictions that would impact cinema attendance, the release date for the film was pushed to April 2021.

*CFP* "CHEN QING LING/THE UNTAMED", BOOK CHAPTERS

We are soliciting book chapters for an edited scholarly collection on Chen Qing Ling/The Untamed, its contexts, and its audiences. This will be a multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary collection that considers the show's popularity, influences, and effects from a variety of cultural and critical viewpoints.

After episodes began airing on Tencent in June 2019, Chen Qing Ling/The Untamed quickly became one of China's most widely-viewed and highest-earning dramas, attracting millions of views per episode and drawing a large international audience through streaming on additional platforms. Over a year later, the show continues to release new paratextual materials, support a vibrant transnational and transcultural fan base, and generate wider, ongoing interest in genres such as danmei, xianxia, and Cdramas. Given these effects, this collection aims to assemble a first compilation of interdisciplinary scholarship that begins to contextualize, explore, and evaluate Chen Qing Ling/The Untamed, the genres and works that inspired it, the contexts that impacted it, and the influences it continues to have.

We are interested in chapters that address topics such as:

*CFP* "SCREENING CONTROVERSY" EDITED COLLECTION, ROUTLEDGE SCREENING FILM SERIES OF BOOKS

You are invited to submit an abstract for the upcoming edited collection Screening Controversy, part of the Routledge Screening Film series of books that aim to support the use of individual film screenings as a core aspect of film studies pedagogy. Books devoted to individual films are often difficult to assign as set readings due to their length and approach which is not conceptualized for screening-based support. Screening Film is positioned to fill this gap in teaching film where screenings are a core activity. Each volume of Screening Film includes fifty key readings on individual films specifically designed with the aim of supporting film screenings. Contributions should be short, focused, contextual and analytical readings that address an individual film of your choice, and, as the title of this volume suggests, this volume is specifically interested in films whose reception has been marred by controversy. 

We invite established and emerging scholars specializing in film studies and cognate disciplines, to contribute chapters of a maximum of 4000 words on an individual film that responds to the theme of the collection. It is expected that each chapter includes any key historical, political, stylistic, industrial contexts which are necessary for understanding the film more broadly, especially in relation to the canon, movements, and debates which circulate around the text and that this is in advance of, or alongside, any new insights, research, and arguments brought to the analysis.

*CFP* "OBSCENITY AND CENSORSHIP: (RE)CONSTRUCTING TABOOS", 34TH ANNUAL INTERDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM

Obscenity & Censorship: (Re)Constructing Taboos

34th Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium 

April 9th-10th, 2021

Graduate Association of French and Italian, Virtual Conference

A word, or a phrase or a work of art deemed obscene for not following the moral structures and sensibilities of a particular period is a tale as old as time. Yet, we as humans often take these judgments at face value, attributing it to the dominant culture at hand and uttering it?s just the way things are. If we turn a more critical eye to these works that were not only accused of being obscene, but also underwent a trial to validate that judgment, it bears asking: who or what has the authority to deem a work of art as such. Who or what determines that an exposed breast in a painting by Rosso Fiorentino is less obscene than a paragraph of libertine literature penned by the Marquis de Sade or than a cinematographic shot of male genitalia in the Decameron?

 

We invite you to address and dialogue with the inherent morality or obscenity within our numerous and varied fields of study. This ambiguous, if not ambivalent, judgment placed on works of art can also quite easily be extended to pop culture and everyday life. We hope that GAFIS 2021 will be a place of compelling and productive interdisciplinary discussion on the topic of obscenity.

*CFP* "OBSCENITY & CENSORSHIP", 34TH ANNUAL INTERDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM

34th Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium

April 9 & 10, 2021 Virtual Conference

The "Obscenity & Censorship" Conference

 

A word, or a phrase or a work of art deemed obscene for not following the moral structures and sensibilities of a particular period is a tale as old as time. Yet, we as humans often take these judgments at face value, attributing it to the dominant culture at hand and uttering it?s just the way things are. If we turn a more critical eye to these works that were not only accused of being obscene, but also underwent a trial to validate that judgment, it bears asking: who or what has the authority to deem a work of art as such. Who or what determines that an exposed breast in a painting by Rosso Fiorentino is less obscene than a paragraph of libertine literature penned by the Marquis de Sade or than a cinematographic shot of male genitalia in the Decameron?

*CFP* "ART AND HUMAN RIGHTS", INTERNATIONAL LISBON CONFERENCE

Art and Human Rights. International Conference

20th-21st May 2021

Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian Lisbon, Portugal

Within the scope of the current human rights challenges our world is facing, arts have been striving to be recognized as a fundamental place for debate and critical thinking, as well as a catalyst for collective awareness and empathy. Exploring topics that range from climate change to the refugee crisis, from discrimination to authoritarian regimes affirmation, several events are prompting artists, both individually and collectively, to rethink the role of art as an agent for social change.

 

In the last decade, several projects were created in countries that continually suffered human rights violations, such as Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and others, which enrich our current knowledge and challenge our perspectives on artistic practices and ways of working around freedom of expression. In the face of current circumstances and having in mind the increase of information shared globally, the relevance of artistic productions as a tool for debate and political intervention becomes more evident. Indeed, we can currently find numerous civic movements, collectives, activists and organizations collaborating with artists to enrich their projects and amplify their values and messages. 

*CFP* "INTERVIEWS WITH LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS", SPECIAL ISSUE, POST SCRIPT: ESSAYS IN FILM AND THE HUMANITIES

Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities solicits submissions for a special issue on Latin American women filmmakers, guest edited by Nora Glickman (CUNY) and Patricia Nuriel (Wofford College).

Over the past four decades the increasing number of women film directors in Latin America has provided a substantial contribution to the field of world cinematography, adding original perspectives that deconstruct conventional conceptions on filmmaking. Their work sheds light across a vast spectrum of themes such as inquiries of history and memory, denunciation of dictatorships, condemnation of violence against minorities and the environment, and exploration of female sexuality.

This special issue of Post Script invites scholars, independent researchers, and filmmakers to submit interviews with Latin American women filmmakers. Review essays and book reviews on the topic are also welcome. Manuscripts must be in English. They should be original and will be subject to peer review. Manuscripts should be between 4000-7000 words for interviews; 750-1,000 words for book reviews, or 3,000 words for review essays (2-3 books).

*CFP* "REFOCUS: THE FILMS OF KIM KI-YOUNG", CHAPTER BOOK

Many contemporary world-renowned South Korean film directors, including Pak Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, cite Kim Ki-young (1919-1998) as the most influential Korean director relative to their work. Over 30 years of his career (1953-1990), Kim Ki-young produced thirty-three films which were regarded as the most sensual, grotesque, provocative films within Korea, the themes and aesthetics of which far exceeded the social and cultural norms of the period. Born and educated during the Japanese colonial period, Kim Ki-young began his film career under USIS (United State Information Service) making small documentary films. Despite the fact his work was largely created during the 30 years of military dictatorship, Kim’s films manage to both retain an eccentric aesthetic style and mirror the lived reality of this incredibly tumultuous period of modern Korean history.

Perhaps Kim Ki-young’s most renowned films are the “housemaid series.” Within the productions The Housemaid (1960), Woman of Fire (1971), Insect Woman (1972), Killer Butterfly (1978), Water Lady (1979), and Beast of Prey/Carnivorous Animal (1984) Kim repeats similar themes and female/male iconography, creating an unseen perverse sexuality within Korean films of the period. 

*CFP* "UNMADE FILM AND TELEVISION", BOOK SERIES

Unmade Film and Television is a new book series with Intellect that explores unmade, unseen, and unreleased film and television from across the globe and from all time periods.

The study of unmade film and television remains neglected and fragmented within scholarly discourse. As such, this series invites contributions (edited collections, monographs etc) on all aspects of unmade, unseen and unreleased film and television from across film and media history. The key aim of the series will be to offer explanations as to why so many projects are left unmade or unreleased, with a focus on the social, political, cultural, industrial, and economic contexts, both at a regional and international level. It is hoped such an approach will allow for insights into the logic of creative failure within the film and television industries.

Ideas may range from individual case studies of directors, producers, writers, genres, studios, and production companies, to wholescale studies of national industries. It may be that the focus is on structural issues (women filmmakers, censorship etc.); on concepts of the unmade, such as creative failure, archival methods, and creative practice; or explorations of what even constitutes the ‘unmade’. 

*CFP* "NATURALIZED INSTITUTIONAL / CULTURAL CENSORSHIP VERSUS FILM / MEDIA THAT ILLUMINATE THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE", UPCOMING ISSUES, THE PROJECTOR: A JOURNAL ON FILM, MEDIA AND CULTURE

A popular site such as ShortList offers lists of what it presents (without qualification) as the best movies of a decade or genre and the best shows to watch on streaming services. The site was first launched in 2010 as an adjunct to Shortlist, the free British weekly magazine designed for young professional men. After its print edition ended in 2018, shortlist.com ostensibly became a venue no longer aimed at white, upwardly mobile (British) men. Today, it presents itself as providing a “new way of ordering your world and helping you find the best of everything [in] entertainment, tech, style, home, health & fitness and food.”

The Projector is developing a series of issues featuring research articles that will examine the tacit or explicit censorship enacted by institutions and socio-economic groups that regularly engage in the Orwellian project of “ordering your world” and “helping you find the best of everything” in film and media. Research articles in the upcoming issues will also explore and contextualize film-media productions that step outside of naturalized aesthetic and/or cultural norms to illuminate the experiences and perspectives of people historically consigned to the margins of film and media narratives. Case studies will come from U.S. and global film-media.

*CFP* "QUEER TV CHINA", EDITED COLLECTION

Contemporary China largely remains a hetero-patriarchal-structured society. Nevertheless, certain media and public spaces—though limited and compromised—are available for the negotiated survival and expressions of its gender, sexual, and sociocultural minorities (Bao 2018, 2020; Engebretsen 2014; Engebretsen and Schroeder 2015; Ho 2010; Kam 2013; Rofel 2007). This is especially evident in today’s Chinese televisual world and its related fannish space (Bai and Song 2015; Gong and Yang 2017; Yang and Bao 2012; Lavin, Yang, and Zhao 2017). Since the beginning of the 2010s, diverse communities, creative practices, and digital tools have flourished in both the mainstream media and online spaces of the Sinosphere. These have worked together to facilitate trans-geocultural and cross-linguistic flows of TV information and local TV production and adaptation (Yang 2009, 2014; Zhao 2018b). Today’s Chinese TV screens are replete with images of norm-defying gendered, sexualized, and/or eroticized performances, sentiments, and embodiments. For example, over the past two decades, there has been a surge in the number of tomboyish female and effeminate male TV stars. Meanwhile, many popular Chinese TV shows have featured cross-gender performances, homosociality, LGBTQ-identified personalities and participants, and even have explicitly addressed topics, such as gay marriage and queer rights.