*CFP* "LAS SERIES DE TELEVISIÓN COMO OBJETO DE ESTUDIO MULTIDISCIPLINAR", VOL. 14 Nº 1, REVISTA MEDITERRÁNEA DE COMUNICACIÓN

Con fecha 28 de diciembre de 2020, Teseo, la base de datos del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, que recoge las tesis doctorales defendidas en España desde el año 1976, identifica un total de 600 trabajos de alumnado de Doctorado que incluyen el término de búsqueda series de televisión; en su título y/o resumen. Esa misma búsqueda documental, llevada a cabo en la base de datos Dialnet (tipología Tesis), recoge 363 registros que aluden al concepto series de televisión, de los cuales, el 78% fueron defendidos entre los años 2010 y 2019. Estamos, pues, ante un objeto de estudio relevante y latente que sigue suscitando a día de hoy el interés no solo de la audiencia televisiva y social, sino también el de la comunidad investigadora, científica, académica y profesional a nivel internacional.

Las series de televisión han sido, son y serán estudiadas desde diferentes perspectivas: audiovisual, educativa, social, profesional, artística, lingüística, técnica, transmedial y comercial-publicitaria, entre otras.

Se trata de un objeto de estudio altamente consumido por los principales destinatarios de los contenidos formativos que se enseñan en las aulas, independientemente del nivel educativo -primaria, secundaria, grado y postgrado- y que por tanto reúne gran variedad de aspectos sobre los que se forma al alumnado. Por ello, el profesorado debe conocer, al menos de forma general, los contenidos de ficción audiovisual más consumidos por la juventud, para tratar de convertir su dedicación docente en contenidos relevantes que capaciten al alumnado a través de contenidos, herramientas, estrategias y técnicas que susciten su interés, motivación e implicación.

*CFP* "MAKING A MURDERER: TRUE CRIME IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS CRIME FICTION STUDIES JOURNAL

“Everybody’s fascinated with the notion that there is a cause and effect,” claims notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, quoted in the Netflix original, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) – that we can “put our finger on it,” and reassuringly rationalise the genesis of the uniquely modern phenomenon of the American serial killer. But when there is “absolutely nothing” in the background of a serial murderer that would lead one to believe they were “capable of committing murder,” how do we begin to acclimatise ourselves to this violent defect of contemporary history? More challengingly, how do we bring depth to our collective portrait of what constitutes a murderer, so that we may then self-exempt our compulsion to look more closely at these perversely familiar figures? 

Over the last 50 years, a plethora of books, magazines, film and television adaptations on the subject of true crime has captured – and held – the public imagination in a vice-like grip, ultimately achieving cult status in postwar-American society while furthermore granting the white male serial killer the kind of cultural capital usually awarded only to celebrities. With the enormous popularity of such series as Making a Murderer (2015) and Mindhunter (2017), however, it seems like now, more than ever, the uneasy question of why we continue to glorify killers by inserting them into mainstream media – and what exactly the appeal of this enduring genre and its mythologization of ultraviolent masculinities tells us about ‘who we are’ and the nature of American society itself – has acquired a new level of urgency, which, in turn, requires new depths of understanding. Likewise, with the growing Netflixisation of true crime, and the narrativization of true crime more broadly, now is the time to establish a study that evaluates the politics of the ever-increasing fine line between actual crime documentaries versus fictional shows that reference true crime.

*CFP* "PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING AND AUTHENTICITY", SPECIAL ISSUE, CELEBRITY STUDIES JOURNAL

We are currently editing a special issue of Celebrity Studies on the topic of Professional Wrestling and Authenticity. At present the issue ranges from general theorisations to specific case studies unpacking how authenticity and celebrity can be figured in the world of wrestling, drawing upon star studies, celebrity studies, sports studies and audience studies to gain a full understanding of the wrestling star image.

We are seeking further submissions to our issue, particularly focussed on how formations of authenticity and celebrity within wrestling have been impacted by the pandemic.

Article topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Wrestlers, social media, and Covid awareness 
• Case studies of wrestler star images and transitions to new forms of labour (e.g. streaming, OnlyFans) 
• The development of ‘cinematic’ wrestling and its relationship to ‘authentic’ performance

 

*CFP* "THE COMEDY OF RICKY GERVAIS: CRITICAL ESSAYS", FORTHCOMING ANTHOLOGY

For over twenty years, Ricky Gervais has entertained audiences with a brand of comedy all his own. The groundbreaking sitcom The Office pioneered the mockumentary genre and has influenced countless programs. Subsequent projects have continued to propel comedy into new directions, forms, and platforms.

The editor of the forthcoming anthology, The Comedy of Ricky Gervais: Critical Essays, is currently soliciting chapters that analyze any aspect of Gervais’ career: as comedian, as actor, and as writer-director.  Essays may examine a single work by Gervais or take a comparative, thematic approach. This work is wide-reaching and hopes to survey as much of Gervais’ work as possible.  This includes the television programs The Office, Extras, The Ricky Gervais Show, An Idiot Abroad, Life’s Too Short, Derek, and Afterlife; films, including The Invention of Lying, Cemetery Junction, Special Correspondents, and David Brent: Life on the Road; and his stand-up comedy specials, including Animals, Science and Humanity. Although this collection focuses film, television, and stand-up comedy, the editor also seeks original essays that address Gervais’ music, Flanimals book series, radio shows / podcasts, and social media presence.

*CFP* "STEVE MCQUEEN: 'I WANT THE BURDEN'", 14TH ANNUAL CONTEMPORARY DIRECTORS SYMPOSIUM

Steve McQueen: “I want the burden”

14th Annual Contemporary Directors Symposium

University of Sussex, online, Friday 24 Sept. 2021

 

Working across a range of formats, from video art and gallery installations to Hollywood to BBC1 with his recent Small Axe pentalogy, Steve McQueen’s prodigious output has been marked by formal ambition and political urgency, engaging most notably, but not exclusively, with black experience in racialised settings. This symposium interrogates his body of work, its political, aesthetic and institutional dimensions, and the interfaces between them.

Proposed papers are especially welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:

*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* "GLOBAL QUEER FANDOMS OF ASIAN MEDIA AND CELEBRITIES", 21.6 ISSUE, COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM SECTION, FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES JOURNAL

Since the 2010s, K-pop music groups, Chinese, South Korean, and Thai TV dramas, Japanese ACG (anime, cosplay, and gaming) cultures, and Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Singaporean films have continued to grow in popularity on a trans-geocultural scale. With little doubt, global flows of Asian entertainment media and pop culture have been paving the way for a decentering of the Western-dominated global mediascape. Certainly, due to the increasingly close and frequent collaborations between media industries in diverse geolocales, the too-often essentialized notion of “Asianness” and the problematic theoretical binarisms of East/West, global/local, and center/periphery need urgent contestation. It is also hard to ignore the central role played by androgynous personas, homosocial and homoerotic narratives, and norm-defying performances in the worldwide prominence of Asian media and celebrity cultures, as well as their flourishing queer fan communities in inter-Asian and Anglophone contexts.

This special Commentary and Criticism section aims to re-center Asia within fan studies through a combined global feminist and queer lens. It highlights the multivalent potential of queer in forming disruption and alternation to established meanings, identities, and norms in global media flows and fannish spaces devoted to Asian media and celebrities. It thus invites contributions that bridge global media studies, Asian pop culture studies, LGBTQ media and audience studies, and queer fan studies to identify promises and problems rooted in or emerging from transcultural, cross-linguistic, multi-ethnic, and (de-)globalist settings.

*CFP* "BENGALI CINEMA", BOOK CHAPTER

Films do not exist in a vaccum: they are almost always conceived produced, distributed and consumed within specific economic and social contexts. Film is now an integral part of our culture. What is it about films that attract us so much? Why do we enjoy films so much? Why indeed should we study films? It is not only fascinating to look at how films are made or even constructed but how they affect us is also a seminal question. What becomes equally important is what they tell us about our society, our understanding of the world around us and how this differs from one nation to another. Cinema brings traditional forms of cultural memory (novels, short stories, plays) to life in an audio-visual medium that transcends barriers of language, space, and time which makes it such an invaluable tool of entertainment.

Since this book is about Bengali cinema an integral part of Indian cinema one cannot begin the discussion without reference to Bollywood as it is popularly known across the world. It is one of the important film industries in the world in terms of the sheer number of films it produces, Hollywood being the other. The first Indian film was Raja Harishchandra (1913) made by Dadsaheb Phalke which was but made via primitive equipment compared to the technology the film directors now have at their disposal. The distribution patterns too have alternated considerably as well with most films now getting digital releases.

*CFP* "MAKING A MURDERER: TRUE CRIME IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE", SPECIAL ISSUE, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS CRIME FICTION STUDIES JOURNAL

“Everybody’s fascinated with the notion that there is a cause and effect,” claims notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, quoted in the Netflix original, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) – that we can “put our finger on it,” and reassuringly rationalise the genesis of the uniquely modern phenomenon of the American serial killer. But when there is “absolutely nothing” in the background of a serial murderer that would lead one to believe they were “capable of committing murder,” how do we begin to acclimatise ourselves to this violent defect of contemporary history? More challengingly, how do we bring depth to our collective portrait of what constitutes a murderer, so that we may then self-exempt our compulsion to look more closely at these perversely familiar figures? 

Over the last 50 years, a plethora of books, magazines, film and television adaptations on the subject of true crime has captured – and held – the public imagination in a vice-like grip, ultimately achieving cult status in postwar-American society while furthermore granting the white male serial killer the kind of cultural capital usually awarded only to celebrities. 

*CFP* "CULTURES OF AUTHENTICITY", EDITED BOOK

Following the successful webinar series, hosted by Loughborough University this autumn, we are now seeking contribution for an edited collection on the topic of 'authenticity'. A widespread fascination with the authentic is said to have emerged as a response to the processes of homogenisation, rationalisation and standardisation at the heart of modernity. The concept of authenticity arose historically at a time of rapid social change and has again come to the fore where social, political, cultural and technological upheavals give rise to feelings of distrust, detachment and alienation against which supposedly authentic people, places and things are sought out for their reassuring certainty and value. Yet, there are huge contradictions and inequalities in who can make claim to authenticity and its construction and communication invariably involves competing narratives and oppositional assertions about what is authentic and how and why the authentic gains its value.

Thus, while the concept of authenticity has a long history, in recent years it has emerged as a prominent theme in many of the most pressing debates about contemporary communication and culture. In political communication there are ongoing concerns about misinformation and fake news, while the success of populist parties is often tied to their claims to be a more authentic representative of ‘the people’ than a detached and dispassionate elite. 

*CFP* "GRACE JONES: POST-COLONIAL. COSMOPOLITAN. ICON", ANTHOLOGY CHAPTERS

Iconic Grace Jones - supermodel, songwriter, singer, record producer, actress and author - theatrically embodies intersectional identity politics. Long before Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the word intersectionality in 1989, Jones was performing a disruptive post-colonial politics that still engenders controversy around gender, sonicity sexuality, race and class. Coming of age in the early years of Jamaican Independence, Jones contested the limiting definitions of working-class black female identity in an essentially neo-colonial society. 

 

Raised in a Fundamentalist Christian home, Jones also broke the repressive religious bonds that constrained her. Assuming the persona of androgynous sex symbol, Jones epitomises liberation from multiple oppressions. 

 

This anthology aims to explore Grace Jones’s stellar, multimodal performance of identity in fashion, music and film, with particular focus on the transgressive and the post-colonial.

 

Grace Jones’s avant-garde work has been wide-ranging and distinctive, and we welcome a variety of approaches.

*CFP* "TEACHING WOMEN'S FILMMAKING", ONLINE CONFERENCE

Teaching Women’s Filmmaking

Online Conference, 16-17 April 2021

Department of Film and Television, Istanbul Bilgi University

 

This virtual conference marks Istanbul Bilgi University’s third annual event dedicated to women and media, following the conference Female Agency and Subjectivity in Film and Television in April 2019, with proceedings forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan (November 2020) and the March 2020 virtual conference Gender Equality and Sustainability: Agnès Varda’s Sustaining Legacy.

This year’s focus blends scholarship with pedagogy. We seek contributions from scholars and teachers around the world that explore strategies, best practices, and past experiences when using films made by women in the classroom and when navigating women’s careers in cinema through teaching and research.

*CFP* CALL FOR ARTICLES, 20TH ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE ISSUE, SLAYAGE: THE JOURNAL OF WHEDON STUDIES

The editors of Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies invite submissions of papers for a special double issue to be published in 2021, celebrating the journal’s twentieth year. The focus will be the School of Whedon. Articles may consider comparisons and influences of Whedon and company’s work in other creations, e.g. elements of Supernatural, Eureka, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or others; articles may also separately consider the work of what might be called the diaspora of artists who have collaborated with Whedon, such as series creators, e.g. Marti Noxon (Sharp Objects), David Greenwalt (Grimm), Tim Minear (American Horror Story), Jane Espenson (Husbands); actors, e.g. Nathan Fillion (Castle), Amy Acker (Person of Interest); composers, e.g. Christophe Beck (Frozen); production designers, e.g. Carey Meyer (C.S.I. Miami); editors, e.g. Lisa Lassek (The Circle); and more. 

The goal of the issue's “School of Whedon” theme is to encourage analyses that push past a singular focus on Whedon's work to consider texts influenced by Whedon, or produced by Whedon's present and/or former collaborators. These considerations may be comparative, but should feature significant engagement with other creators associated with Whedon.

*CFP* "THE JOURNEYS OF CARY GRANT: AN AUDIOVISUAL CELEBRATION", VIDEO ESSAYS, CARY COMES HOME AND THE VIDEO ESSAY PODCAST

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Cary Grant’s journey to the United States and international stardom, his hometown’s festival is seeking video essays exploring journeys of many types. This year marks the centenary of Archie Leach’s first transatlantic voyage, the beginning of his incredible journey to becoming Cary Grant. Born in Bristol, UK in 1904 as Archibald Leach, Archie ran away from school with a troupe of acrobats and later sailed to America on the RMS Olympic on 21 July 1920 on, arriving in New York on 28 July. Archie lived in New York for over 10 years developing his craft, first in vaudeville, then in a music hall on the Broadway stage, before setting off in a yellow open-top Packard in November 1931 for Hollywood, where he changed his name and the rest is history. Journeys also feature in many of his films, from the 2000-mile chase of North by Northwest to the cruise ship romance in An Affair to Remember.

We are interested in exploring the idea of the journey, not only in terms of geography, place, space and physical travels (both real life and on film), but also in terms of psychological journeys: voyages of identity, self-discovery and self-invention. We are open to all kinds of journeys, including fan journeys, star pilgrimage, set-jetting, movie location tours and rephotography and all forms of audio-visual criticism, including video essays, fanvids, and any kind of video that reappropriates footage of Cary Grant. 

*CFP* "FEMALE ARCHETYPES AND THE STAR SYSTEM IN THE HISTORY OF SPANISH CINEMA", ISSUE 32, L'ATALANTE: REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS CINEMATOGRÁFICOS

Archetypes in cinema, as Edgar Morin (1972) noted, are linked to the faces of the stars who, from the earliest days, portrayed prototypical characters that were repeated with the implicit strategy of creating loyalty processes with audiences. In the case of actresses, the different female figurations (from the innocent virgin to the femme fatale) evolved over the years in such a way that neither the bad girls proved to be so evil nor the good girls so angelic. During the first half of the 20th century (and despite the initial dominance of the powerful and influential film industries of France, Italy and Germany) it was the Hollywood star system that became the primary focus in terms of the archetypical production of female characters related with stardom. 

Later on, Molly Haskel (1973) and Marjorie Rossen (1973) launched a critical feminist reading of the archetypes that were conjured up by actresses in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Since then, in fact, stars and their various typologies have been examined from various viewpoints, including feminism, psychoanalysis (Gledhill, 1991), the spheres addressed by gender studies (Studlar, 1996) and the ideas of reception theory (Hansen, 1986; Stacey, 1994; Mayne, 1993). The idea that in contemporary cinema, stars need to exhibit different identities, embodying an “elastic self” (King: 2003), as if they needed to destroy (or play at destroying) some of the fixed principles of the archetypal notion that was invented by classic cinema all enables us to observe the history of stardom in cinema as a process of figurative mutations that is always related to the evolution of ideologies.

*CFP* "A CRITICAL COMPANION TO MEL GIBSON", CRITICAL COMPANION TO POPULAR DIRECTORS SERIES, EDITED VOLUME

Mel Gibson was one of the biggest film stars from the end of the nineties and the early 2000s. His movies were big international successes and he decided to become a director in 1993 with The Man without a Face, a low-budget film that already contains all the themes of his future oeuvre as a director. Obviously, Gibson is a real author, an artist who questions the ambivalence of the human being, a being who is capable of the best and the worst. This theme is also representative of his career as a director, because Gibson enjoyed fame (Braveheart won 5 Oscars, including that for best film in 1996) but also ostracization after The Passion of the Christ (2004). The latter film created a scandal, the director being accused of anti-Semitism, because of his portrayal of the Jewish people as the deicide people. In addition, Gibson’s personal life is also troubled as he himself is accused of being racist, homophobic and anti-Semist. However, like Christ, he managed to resuscitate in Hollywood with a war film Hacksaw Ridge (2016), which won 2 Oscars and 6 nominations. A feat for a director who has always tried to work on different film genres (drama, adventure film, peplum, war ...).

Now, Mel Gibson is once again an important director in Hollywood and this book shall demonstrate all the thematic and aesthetic richness of his work. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches that can illuminate the various aspects of the director’s work and visual style. This volume will undertake to address the entirety of his work. As this volume will be peer-reviewed and scholarly, chapters are to be written at a high academic level.

*CFP* "CHILDREN AND CELEBRITIES", SPECIAL EDITION, THE CELEBRITY STUDIES JOURNAL

The entertainment industries create the most widely circulated popular images of children and childhood, and yet the role of children in celebrity studies warrants further study. As John Mercer and Jane O’Connor (2017) point out, the intersection between Childhood Studies and Celebrity Studies has been gaining traction in recent years, highlighting a tension between the dominant discourses of innocence surrounding children, and the highly competitive commercial imperatives of celebrity culture.

New participatory entertainment ecologies have created new opportunities for child performers, leading to the rise of new kinds of child celebrities and surrounding reception cultures. For instance, on YouTube, the world’s most popular user-generated video streaming service, some of the most successful celebrities are children: eight year old Ryan Kaji – a North American child who reviews toys for the channel ‘Ryan’s World’ (formerly ‘Ryan ToysReview’) – was the highest-earning YouTube personality of the year in both 2018 (Statista, 2019) and 2019 (Berg, 2019).

*CFP* "IDOLS: POP CULTURE ICONS AS BRAND AMBASSADORS FOR FASHION AND COSMETICS IN CHINA", EDITED COLLECTION

Call for Papers for a proposed edited collection tentatively titled “Idols: Pop Culture Icons as Brand Ambassadors for Fashion and Cosmetics in China” to be edited by Amanda Sikarskie, Ph.D., University of Michigan.

In China, popular culture idols are vital to the luxury fashion and cosmetics industry as brand ambassadors. This volume hopes to fill a critical gap in the English-language literature on this subject, bringing together authors from China, the United States, and around the world.

Essays for this volume can focus on any pop idols in China that serve as brand ambassadors in fashion, jewelry, or cosmetics. A few questions that the essays might pose include: Why are idols so important as brand ambassadors in China? What is the role of male idols in marketing cosmetics and skincare? What is the relationship of Chinese idols to fans and consumers in other Asian countries? What is the future for virtual reality idols as brand ambassadors, especially in the era of COVID-19?

*CFP* "RETHINKING DOCUMENTARY AND NONFICTION IN 2020", 88TH ISSUE, VELVET LIGHT TRAP JOURNAL

The current media ecology places more emphasis than ever on the role of nonfiction media in the creation and obfuscation of “truth.” Documentary theory has probed the dialectical relationship between the documentary impulse to represent reality and the sometimes-argued impossibility of media to do just that (Barnouw 1993; Bruzzi 2000; Nichols 2001; Platinga 2005). The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the current global protests galvanized by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks, and countless other Black Americans have laid bare the role that audio-visual media plays in shaping reality and inspiring collective action. There should be an urgency in scholarship on nonfiction media to engage, analyze, and theorize a wider range of documentary texts, modes, practices and trends.

For this issue, we welcome submissions that examine the creation, circulation and discourses surrounding nonfiction media. We purposefully choose to emphasize nonfiction media as opposed to simply documentary because we are interested in a range of submissions that engage with not only film or television, but also papers on podcasts, news media, social media, internet culture, video games, animation and virtual reality. These articles could include but are not limited to discussing the role of nonfiction media as record or archive and how participatory media culture plays a role in opposing (or reinforcing) hegemonic narratives.

*CFP* “BOB DYLAN ON SCREEN”, CHAPTER BOOK

On May 12, 1963, Bob Dylan left the set of the Ed Sullivan Show, incensed the producers rejected his decision to “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” This non-circulation of his image through television provided valuable publicity and Dylan would boast of “the song they didn’t let me play on TV.” This incident stands at the beginning of an ambivalent and complicated relationship between Dylan’s persona, as expressed through his words and music, and its dissemination through screen media. This has been an uneven process: the documentary Dont Look Back (1967) is a classic of direct cinema and played an important role in broadcasting Dylan’s image, but its planned follow-up, Eat the Document (1972), went a different direction: Dylan insisted on editing it himself, it showed once on television and vanished into obscurity. The editing alone of his self-directed four-hour film Renaldo and Clara (1978) occupied more than a year of Dylan’s career, which should logically qualify it as a major work. Instead it’s little more than a footnote even for Dylan’s most devoted fans, watched by few and liked by fewer; Martin Scorsese’s repurposing of footage in Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (2019) may be Renaldo and Clara’s lone legacy. Masked and Anonymous (2003) was scarcely better received. Though it found some admirers, Dylan himself would express disappointment with it in a 2012 interview with Mikal Gilmore, stating that, When you want to make a film and you’re using outside money, there’s just too many people you have to listen to. He even joked that they should have hired Cate Blanchett to play his part, Jack Fate.