*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* "TOTAL SCREEN: WHY JEAN BAUDRILLARD, ONCE AGAIN?", SPECIAL ISSUE, MAST JOURNAL

What place does or could Jean Baudrillard occupy in media studies, visual studies, and art theory today? How does his work—as both a philosopher and a vernacular photographer—continue to influence visual artists and other forms of media art? How can we confront his radical views with feminist, intersectional, queer, postcolonial, and other critical approaches? This special issue of MAST journal seeks to answer and further explore these questions through proposals from arts practitioners and theorists.

Provocative, eclectic, ironic, playful, and anticipatory, Baudrillard’s thinking propels both the image and photography—and that which evades them—into a dimension that inspires, questions, amazes, and disturbs. Almost thirty years after 1991, when he argued that “the Gulf War did not take place” (Baudrillard, 1995) in an attempt to demonstrate the extent to which our society of images has deviated from an already-vanished reality; almost twenty years after 9/11, when he referred to the destruction of the Twin Towers on live television as a symbiotic apex between experience and its image; his conception of the image, of its forms, and of its plasticity remain resolutely contemporary and open to criticism.

*CFP* "TRUE CRIME IN AMERICAN MEDIA", CHAPTER BOOK

A new edited collection on true crime in 21st century American visual and audio media invites proposals for chapters. 

This new book seeks to present original scholarship on the structure, themes and consumption of true crime in today’s visual/audio media landscape.

From sober documentary film through ‘binge-worthy’ streaming of podcasts and television series, true crime appears in a wide variety of styles and attracts an equally varied array of responses.  This book hopes to reflect as many approaches as possible.

While the central focus will be on American films and series of the 21st century, the collection would also benefit from discussions on the global reach and/or influences of such media, so proposals on such topics are welcomed.

*CFP* "WRITTEN ON THE BODY: NARRATIVE (RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF VIOLENCE(S)", NORDIC SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2020 SYMPOSIUM

Second Symposium of the Study Circle Narrative and Violence (2020-2022)

Written on the Body: Narrative (Re)constructions of Violence(s)

26th July 2020- 2nd August 2020

Rønningen Folkehøgskole, Norway

We invite scholars, students, practitioners and activists from all fields to take part in the second symposium of the Study Circle Narrative and Violence (2020–2022). The Circle is run under the auspices of the Nordic Summer University, a migratory, non–hierarchical group of international researchers that is a forum for experimentation and cross–disciplinary collaboration welcoming members from both within and outside universities and other institutions.

Following the discussions at our first symposium on how to make sense of violence in the digital age, we now wish to direct our attention to the ‘bodies’ that are subjects and objects of violence and that, by simply ‘being’, narrate their traumatic experience. But how do bodies narrate violence(s)? Our understanding of a body is purposefully encompassing and includes the human and nonhuman, the organic and inorganic, and their diverse material, or corporeal, forms. We are therefore engaging with bodies that are human, animal, vegetal, natural and technological; that are both singular and collective (i.e. the social body); that are situated in both the physical and virtual space; and that express naturecultural entanglements (Haraway 2003). 

*CFP* "VIOLENCE AND SOCIETY", INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

“Violence and Society” International Conference

22 August 2020 

London, UK

organised by 

London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research

Violence has become one of the features of the present-day world, although it has existed throughout times, playing undoubtedly an important role in the development of any society. The analysis of violence is a complicated and controversial issue nowadays, as it may cover different levels – interpersonal, institutional, collective violence; as well as different forms – racist crimes, gender based violence, genocide etc. The conference will be an attempt to shed light on the social construction and nature of violence, applying an interdisciplinary approach to various manifestations of violence.

*CFP* "VIOLENCE AND ORDERS", FIRST ISSUE, THE JOURNAL FOR CRITICAL THOUGHT AND RADICAL POLITICS

Since 2015 over 2 million Venezuelans have been forced to flee their country and are now refugees. In 2017 US States passed 129 anti-LGBTQ+ laws. In 2018 half of all women murdered in the UK were killed by their partners. Today Kurdish people are imprisoned as low-ranking members of a non-violent political organisation. Turkish academics are exiled or imprisoned for signing a letter calling for peace. In the US 60% of the prison population are people of colour, despite constituting only a quarter of the population. In Syria 11 million people have been displaced through conflict while 5 million have sought asylum abroad. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has urged citizens to murder suspected criminals and drug addicts.

This inaugural issue of Interfere examines orders that systematically produce economic and political violence. It invites contributions that analyse the violence of neo-liberal and neo-conservative logics; the aftermaths of colonialism; forced displacements and immigration politics; technologies of surveillance; and the rise of exclusionary discourses worldwide. We also welcome contributions that analyse resistance to these forms of violence.

*CFP* “RAPE AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE: A LITERARY RESPONSE”, CHAPTER BOOK

As per most of the definitions, rape is defined as non-consensual penetration of either the vagina or the anus. However, it is not merely physical, though it is rooted in biology, but its impacts are psychological in nature. Its consequences are experienced not only by the victim but by the victimizer as well. In almost all the cultures, rape is deployed as a weapon of domination by patriarchy. The penultimate threat for a woman, as it has been observed since centuries, is the fear of being raped. Through rape, patriarchy has often exercised absolute hegemony.

Every culture/society has responded to the idea of rape in its unique way. Some societies are quick in punishing the rapists whereas some give the victimizers a chance to argue their cases. What is most common is the fact that most often the perpetrators go scot free and the victim is held responsible by the society and discriminated against. Black Women like any other have confronted the violence of rape, but their suffering is slightly unique because of their position in history and society. They have been ravished in Africa during colonial expansion and they have been violated in the new world during the times of slavery. They have been defiled by the White men and they have been corrupted by the Black men. Sometimes, they have been deflowered by their own fathers and brothers and at other times they have been despoiled by the system itself.

*CFP* “ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MASCULINITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE”, CHAPTER BOOK

Masculinity—that hard to define notion of “being a man” or “acting like a man”—is largely understood through cultural expectations and images of masculine performance. Masculinity can seem nebulous, but literary and popular cultural representations of the idea help to solidify it both as a concept and as an identity. Westerns, noir, thrillers, war narratives, working class narratives, and even apocalyptic films and novels have shaped our definitions not only of what it means to be a man, or to be masculine, but indeed what it means to be American.

Perhaps at no time in American history has it been more critical to examine masculinity in literature and culture. Recently, the U.S. has seen a rise in misogynistic and race-based violence perpetrated by men expressing a sense of grievance, from “incels” to alt-right activists. The existential “threat” to masculinity, in an era in which women and other gender minorities remain severely under-represented in U.S. Congress (at 24% and 25% in the House and Senate respectively) and in which civil rights and bodily autonomy for women and gender minorities erode daily, can be difficult to comprehend. However, the study of masculinity in American literature and culture offers key insights and context for the existential threat posed by accountability movements such as #MeToo and increasing political representation of women and minorities. 

*CFP* "AFECTOS Y VIOLENCIA EN LA CULTURA LATINOAMERICANA", COLOQUIO INTERNACIONAL

Afectos y violencia en la cultura latinoamericana

Coloquio internacional

Universidad de Utrecht, Holanda

5-6 de diciembre de 2019

Después de más de diez años de efervescencia teórica sobre el tema de los afectos, el panorama actual muestra una diversidad de enfoques, que van desde la crítica queer y feminista, las lecturas deleuzianas basadas en Spinoza, la narratología afectiva con su atención por la estructura emocional de relatos, hasta la psicología cultural, la sociología de los emociones y los estudios cognitivos. Desde la producción en Latinoamérica, múltiples son los acercamientos a la problemática de los afectos o emociones que intentan crear nuevos conceptos o trasladar la comúnmente usada matriz anglófona a las latitudes del Sur.

*CFP* “HYBRID DIALOGUES: TRANSCENDING BINARY THINKING AND MOVING AWAY FROM SOCIETAL POLARIZATIONS”, 5TH ESTIDIA CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES L’ORIENTALE

Hybrid Dialogues: Transcending Binary Thinking and Moving Away from Societal Polarizations

5th ESTIDIA Conference

Global Discourses (and Counter-Discourses) of Hostility in the Social Media Age

19-21 September 2019

University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy

Organizer: Dr. Eleonora Esposito (University of Navarra)

We invite submission of abstracts for a panel entitled Global Discourses (and Counter-Discourses) of Hostility in the Social MediaAge, to be proposed as part of the ESTIDIA (European Society for Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Dialogue) Conference, to be held on 19-21 September 2019 at the University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy. The fast-emerging technologies of the participatory web have transformed the way we communicate, explore and connect to the world forever. The new range of indigenous genres, contents and practices, situated at the intersection of mass and interpersonal communication, fosters the pursuit of personal interests in a shared scenario as well as the creation and maintenance of global relations that validate and support identities and behaviours. Not simply grounded in the incessant sharing of information content, the social media communication paradigm is characterized by a limitless potential for ordinary (rather than élite) media performance, with an ever-growing number of bottom-up discourse formations and disseminations.

*CFP* "SCREENING VIOLENCE: AFFECT, RESPONSIBILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY" CONFERENCE

“… these violent delights have violent ends”

Contemporary screen violence is inextricable from seismic shifts in gender relations, growing schisms in personal and political belief systems, and a polarization of public sentiment, highlighted in the Anglo-American West in the election of Donald Trump in the US and the Brexit referendum in the UK. We have witnessed growing racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism and misogyny. Some of this violence has emerged from ‘obvious’ places, such as in the extreme nationalism of the alt-right or in the recuperation of power by MRAs. In the media industries, the Weinstein scandal, among others, has revealed swaths of sex pests, abusers and rapists living on multi-million fortunes, reanimating feminist arguments about the ways in which patriarchy and capitalism are entangled in media industries themselves as well as the media they produce. At the same time, critical attention has been paid to the role of austerity, neoliberalism and widening social inequality in intensifying violent public discourses around race and ethnicity, migration, poverty, disability and mental health.  In such ‘troubled times’, it is no wonder that screen cultures reveal a new, complex kind of violence. This includes a range of media, from television, film, and digital culture.

*CFP* "PLEASURES OF VIOLENCE", CONFERENCE OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

Pleasures of Violence

Conference to be held at Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK)

March 7-8, 2019

It has become a truism to claim that social media bring out the worst in us. But who gets to be the subjects and the agents of violence in an economy built to repackage violence? In Updating to Remain the Same Habitual New Media, Wendy Chun exposes the hypocritical dissonance between our fantasies about the Internet and our online practices. For instance, we are continually surprised at the leaking of a network that is precisely built to leak; or we project the promiscuousness of networks onto bodies that aren’t supposed to matter. Digitality has become, then, indissociable from questions of injury, aggression and pre-determined targets. Such impulses of violent digitality have further become central spectacles on cinema, television and video game screens.  

Why does the digital seem so well suited for the most insidious and blatant of death drives?

*CFP* CALL FOR PAPERS "UNDER FIRE" SECTION, CRITICAL ARTS JOURNAL

The post-millennium world has seen a rapid escalation of violent conflicts in the Middle East, West, Central and some areas of Southern Africa, and ongoing civil wars, refugee migrations on unprecedented scales and human rights abuses in a variety of other regions across the world. As a means to engage these developments, Critical Arts instituted a new Section, “Under Fire” in 2002. This is in keeping with its interpretation of cultural studies as a form of praxis, of experience, and of strategic intervention, in which individuals find themselves caught up in broader process over which they may have little or no control. The aim of this section is to invite short (anything up to 2000 words) theorised autobiographies, authoethnographies, and dramatic narratives of what it is like living under fire, of the relevance of cultural studies in such circumstances, and how it could be deployed to challenge such conditions. The original Call emanated from a number of unsolicited submissions we had been receiving from colleagues in Palestine and Zimbabwe, letters from friends in Israel, and marginalised groups in South Africa, and from academics whose research and work is pilloried by hostile authorities. The exigencies of being under fire make it hard to find the discursive space in which participants can catch enough breath to speak the truths of their own participation: