The following is a call for papers for a special session at the MLA convention in December of 1996. TEACHING FILM THEORY IN THE AGE OF MTV: Conventional histories of cinema take as central a distinction seen as going back to Lumiere and Melies, the distinction between cinema as a document of the "real" and cinema as an artifice of images. In this history the two archetypal--if not seminal--figures are Bazin and Eisenstein, and the touchstone issue is the nature and purpose of montage. But whatever claims earlier arguements about montage may have, recent developments in the actual practice of film require a rethinking of this touchstone issue. Recent mainstream [Holywood] cinema--perhaps under the influence of MTV--has either deviated from or reconfigured the invisible editing of the classical system of continuity. The ostensible goal of making the viewer unaware of the editing process--with the accompanying ideological goal of "suturing" the viewer into the fantasy space of the diegesis--hardly seems a tenable explantion when the jump cut is increasingly the lingua franca of at least certain kinds of mainstream films. It would seem then that we either need a new way of coneptualizing montage or we must find a theoretical justification for seeing MTV style editing as operating within the frame of the old debate. This problem is especially acute for those who teach cinema studies/film theory and who thus must find a coherent way of relating classical models of cinema to actual contemporary film practice. Please send proposals for twenty minute papers, taking any position on this question, to: Mike Frank / English Department / Graduate Center / Bentley College / Waltham MA 02154 or, via e-mail, to <[log in to unmask]> Proposals should be between 300 and 1000 words long, and should be submitted by 15 November. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]