*CFP* "POETIC INSURRECTIONS. ROMANTIC LEGACIES IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY FILM AESTHETICS", INTERNATIONAL FILM STUDIES CONFERENCE

Poetic Insurrections. Romantic Legacies in Modern and Contemporary Film Aesthetics

Research Centre for Visual Poetics (University of Antwerp)

20-21 January 2022

 

The ‘return’ to Romanticism in the recent consideration of modernist cinemas (see Richard Suchenski, Projections of Memory: Romanticism, Modernism, and the Aesthetics of Film; Daniel Morgan, Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema) can be taken as a way to frame the apparent contradictions in the work of a number of key figures: the revolutionary cinema of Jean-Luc Godard seems at odds with the seeming reactionism of a sanctification of natural beauty in his ‘late’ works. The strict materialism of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, in its turn, gave way to reflections on the necessity of myth and utopian ideals in the politicization of art. And although the cinema of Marguerite Duras is characterized by a destructive negativity, her films exhibit a minute attention to material presence. We believe that the same contradictions that characterize these works can be found in the films of a number of contemporary filmmakers - Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Hong Sang-soo, Wang Bing, Lav Diaz, Albert Serra etc. - allowing us to align them with the project of aesthetic modernism. It is our contention (one we share with Nancy & Lacoue-Labarthe, Rancière, J.M. Schaeffer and others) that this project can indeed best be approached by considering its romantic undercurrent.

*CFP* "MODALITIES OF FANTASY: RECONFIGURING TIME AND SPACE", SPECIAL ISSUE, THE LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL

Domain of the Fantastic is the ground for physical, biological, and metaphysical riddles about the architecture of perceived natural order of ‘life’ which re-organizes readers’ world to forge novel experiences of reality. Immediacy of the domain of Fantasy becomes relevant as a radical Other of our pandemic-hit reality—which is forcing us to make sense of the present world and devise new meanings—by introducing alternate perspectives on human condition that edge on becoming the normative. The production and reception of Fantasy narratives, as the Other, is driven by an immersive lure of fateful quest of an individual to redeem a crumbling community. 

Its built-in pluralistic vision—at social, cultural, historical, and bodily levels—catalyses its form against all fixed definites, and makes its relevance increasingly comprehensible in tackling the grim dystopic truths of our times as well as shaping our utopian desires. Both the generation of the fantasy narratives and the means of their operations determine the relations which are formed between an individual and his socio-economic and political conditions. Being theorized as political, fantasy narratives channelize the strategies of resistance and revolution, subversion and repression through their characteristic ‘unreal’ representations. The contextual placing of these unreal themes within fantasy texts, in the form of allegories, as such become the index of its functioning within the established ideological frameworks.

 

*CFP* "MITO Y CIENCIA FICCIÓN", VI CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE MITOCRÍTICA

VI Congreso Internacional de Mitocrítica: “Mito y ciencia ficción”

Asociación Internacional de Mitocrítica (Asteria), Universidad Francisco de Vitoria y Universidad Complutense

Universidad Complutense, Av. Séneca, 2, 28040 Madrid (España)

Del 27 al 30 de octubre de 2020

La Asociación Internacional de Mitocrítica (Asteria), la Universidad Francisco de Vitoria y la Universidad Complutense celebran este congreso del 27 al 30 de octubre de 2020. El objetivo es analizar las relaciones entre la ciencia ficción y los mitos: sus diferencias, sus convergencias y subversiones a través de los medios artísticos desde 1900 hasta la actualidad. El plazo para el envío de propuestas termina el 1 de mayo de 2020.

Ejes temáticos:

*CFP* “DRAGONS”, EDITED COLLECTIONS ON FILM, LITERATURE, GAMING AND ONLINE CULTURE

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 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:

• Dragons in Film and Television
• Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels
• Dragons in Fiction and Mythology (literature aimed for adults and general myth)
• Dragon Games and Online Culture
• Dragons and Posthumanism
• Dragons and Pastoral
• Dragons and Ecocriticism

*CFP* “CRITICALLY READING THE VAMPIRE DIARIES”, CHAPTER BOOK

Vampires are a phenomenon that have captivated humans since ancient times, and continue to globally fascinate different target audiences. From vampires in early Chinese traditions to their depiction in early poems such as “The Vampire” by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, to Lord Byron’s “The Vampyre”, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to vampires in more recent TV series and movies, this creature has not only evoked fear and horror but has also embodied both anxieties as well as desires of the culture and time in which it was created. Consequently, as vampire narratives today have started to go beyond the realms of horror, sometimes even turning the vampire into romantic heroes, they bring new insights to current issues across various fields.

This call for papers reaches out to scholars interested in working on interpretations of the CBS series The Vampire Diaries. This American supernatural teen drama features a diverse set of characters, both dead and undead, while touching on topics such as friendship, romance, adulthood, as well as depression, and aging. So far, no book length work has dealt with this complex series, and it is our aim to publish an in-depth analysis consisting of 10-11 chapters that offer critical and creative readings of this series.

*CFP* “OUR DICKENS: DICKENS AND HIS PUBLICS”, 25TH ANNUAL DICKENS SOCIETY 2020 SYMPOSIUM

25th annual dickens society 2020 symposium

Our Dickens: Dickens and his publics

17-19 de julio de 2020

Bloomsbury, London, UK

In 2020, the 150-year anniversary of Dickens’s death, the annual Dickens Society Symposium will take place in Bloomsbury, Dickens’s home for periods of time and where he produced some of his most memorable novels. Organised by Royal Holloway, University of London, in collaboration with the Charles Dickens Museum (formerly the Dickens House Museum), the anniversary Symposium seeks to explore what Dickens means to so many people across the world and why he has meant so much to diverse publics over time.

Proposals from scholars, independent researchers, and graduate students on the theme of ‘Our Dickens: Dickens and his Publics’ are invited; as is customary at Dickens Society symposia, proposals on other aspects of Dickens’s life and work will also be considered. One page (250-300 word) abstracts for papers deliverable in 20 minutes, plus 150-word bios, may be submitted Sept. 1 – Nov. 1, 2019 to Dickens.Symposium.2020@gmail.com.

*CFP* “CULTURAL MEMORIES AND NATIONAL IDEOLOGIES: EXPLORING POLITICAL MYTHS THROUGH CINEMA” FRAMES CINEMA JOURNAL. ISSUE 15, SUMMER 2019

Political myths operate with varying levels of visibility in our everyday lives. They are a fundamental component of our everyday perception, functioning as an influential ideological and emotional force within social life. They serve vital sociological functions, articulating the hopes and fears of a given society and uniting disjointed people through forms of collective identity deemed acceptable and gratifying. Political myths function as vehicles of political doctrine utilised by all social groups in the consolidation of their respective ideologies. Consequently, such myths are often perceived as inherent truths endowed with the strength and conviction of religious belief by those invested in them and delusions and fallacies by those who are not.

Cinema, one may argue, is the consummate medium of modern day political mythmaking. In our contemporary media society, images and sounds play an increasing role in the shaping of our perceptions and social experiences, moulding the very structures of daily life. Films help contribute to the construction of our political values, our social identities, our understanding of what it is to be a certain class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Films shape our morality, dictating what is good and evil, right and wrong. By transcoding the discourses of the social world into images, films present audiences with the materials through which they construct their subjectivities.