Call for Papers
"Affairs of Race: Interracial Relationships in Film and History"
2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television
November 11-14, 2010
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second Round Deadline: November 1, 2009
 
AREA: Affairs of Race: Interracial Relationahips in Film and History
 
Love across the boundaries of race and ethnicity has most often been depicted, in film and television, as a love that defies social norms.  Traditionally fraught with challenges, beset by problems, and laden with danger, it is a category of relationships that reveals social fears of miscegenation and elicits cautionary tales of its consequences - both mirroring and shaping mainstream audiences' perceptions as society's ideas about interracial love have shifted.
 
Affairs of Race creates a space for considering the various manifestations and outcomes of love across racial and ethnic boundaries in film and television, from the reexamination of such classics as Sydney Poitier's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and A Patch of Blue, John Ford's The Searchers and My Darling Clementine, Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, and Denzel Washington's Mississippi Masala, to more recent offerings.  Examples from outside the United States, such as Mathieu Kassovitz' Café au lait, and from Asian, Native American, or Hispanic perspectives are especially welcome to extend the discussion beyond issues of "black" and "white."   
This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes papers and panel proposals that examine all forms and genres of film or television productions featuring racial and ethnic boundaries as a determining aspect of love and its outcomes.  Possibilities include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
 
* The Production Code and anxieties of race, sex, and gender.
* Hollywood fantasies and the creation of interracial and interethnic desire
* From a directorial point of view (looking at limitations enforced by the industry at large)
* Beyond Black and White (considering the issue from other ethnic combinations)
* Latino(a) lovers 
* New frontiers (examining films from emerging centers of production in Eastern Europe, the Middle East,
  Mexico)
* European vs. American attitudes toward interracial or interethnic romance 
* Love stories vs. immigration trials
* Social class as context in interracial or interethnic romance
* Sexual orientation as context in interracial or interethnic romance
* Post-colonial theory (assessing its influence on "affairs of race" in film and film studies) 
 
Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair:
Carole Martin, Area Chair
Texas State University
Department of Modern Languages
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666
Email: [log in to unmask] (email submissions preferred)
 
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).

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