Could you please post this call for papers on Screen-L.



Thanks,

Roger Hallas



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APOLOGIES FOR ANY CROSS-POSTING!



THE IMAGE AND THE WITNESS



CALL FOR PAPERS



Submissions are invited for an edited book with the working title The

Image and the Witness, which will explore the twin concerns of the

image as witness and images of witnesses to traumatic historical

events. In recent years photographic, film, video and televisual

images have played an increasingly important role in the formation

and documentation of historical events. Similarly, archival images of

past traumatic events have become ever more accessible. At the same

time however, the computer generation and manipulation of media

images problematize the notion of the "original" image that witnesses

historical events. Parallel to developments in image production and

dissemination, scholarly interest in the aesthetics and politics of

imaging trauma has understandably burgeoned. At the center of this

literature has been concern for both the psychological and political

significance of witnessing historical trauma. In the ever-expanding

field of image studies, there has also been a continued interrogation

of the ethics and aesthetics of images which document the traumatic

historical event. This collection will examine the urgent concerns

raised by analogue and digital images of traumatic historical events,

concerns that lie at the intersection of image studies and trauma

studies. Such events could include: the Holocaust;

Hiroshima/Nagasaki; wars, such as the Gulf War, the Balkan wars or

World War II; the Intifada; September 11; the AIDS epidemic; the rise

and fall of political dictatorships, such as those of Milosevic,

Pinochet and Ceausescu; colonization; mediated catastrophes or

crises; and human rights abuses.

We envision contributions that explore the image and the witness from

within a variety of conceptual sites The collection will be organized

according to these sites. Possible sites include: the

aestheticization of the event/witness; the politics of framing and/or

narrativizing the witness/event; challenges to notions of realism

mobilized through witnessing; the indexicality of the image; the

image as a form of documentary evidence for the writing of history;

the presence, absence and appearance of the event and/or image;

authorship and ownership of the image; the status of the body in the

act of witnessing; the assertion of identity through witnessing; the

politics of the image archive in narratives of witnessing; the

appropriation of images for uses other than those for which they were

designed; the relationship between the image and linguistic or

textual testimony; the ethics of image production, reproduction and

dissemination; the ethical responsibility for remembering.

Through the intersection of images of traumatic historical events and

a variety of conceptual sites, the collection will both contribute to

ongoing debates about the politics and aesthetics of witnessing, and

better assess the role of the still and moving image within

contemporary history and culture more generally.



The book will be edited by Frances Guerin (University of Kent, Canterbury, UK)

and Roger Hallas (Syracuse University, USA).



Send a 500 word proposal and brief resume by December 1, 2002

(revised deadline) to:



Frances Guerin, School of Drama, Film and Visual Arts, Rutherford

College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX, United

Kingdom. Fax: +44 1227 82 7846, email: [log in to unmask]



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