Call for Papers -- Sex Scene: Media, Popular Culture and the Sexual Revolution
The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s has been the subject of many books, including such
recent volumes as John Heidenry’s What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution,
David Allyn’s Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History, and Jeffrey
Escoffier’s anthology Sexual Revolution. While all of these books touch on motion pictures,
television, and other media during the period, a thorough exploration of the media’s role in the
sexual revolution has yet to appear. Sex Scene: Media, Popular Culture and the Sexual Revolution
is an anthology that posits that the media were integral to the sexual revolution, both as causal
factors and as symptoms of changing aesthetics, taste, and morality. The collection will
concentrate on the years bounded by 1968 (the introduction of the MPAA ratings system, the
appearance of I Am Curious [Yellow], etc.) and 1973 (the Supreme Court’s Miller decision, the
height of “porno chic”). These six years saw an unprecedented explosion in the dissemination of
sexualized representation in the media, what Life magazine described as a “torrent of sexuality.”
Sex had become part of “the scene” and indeed, in mainstream movies the love scene was
increasingly supplanted with the sex scene.
Currently nine essays by established and emerging scholars are committed to the anthology and I
am seeking four to six additional original essays to round out the collection. Like the essays
already committed, those proposed should be grounded in solid historical research in primary
documents. Textual analysis of individual films or other texts is discouraged. While motion
pictures will be the focus of most of the essays in the collection, others consider multi-media
presentations, media events, and audio recordings. Potential contributors are encouraged to think
expansively about media as well as intersections between media. Essays should approach their
subjects in ways that consider the appropriate social, political, legal, or other contexts so they
have value that extends beyond film and media studies to American history, gender and sexuality
studies, etc.
Please email me off-list with ideas and queries through July 31. I hope to make decisions about
additional essays by mid-August, at which time one-page abstracts will be due. Please note that I
am planning panel(s) for the 2007 SCMS conference on the subject of the anthology and writers
might consider that forum as a launching point for their work. Final drafts of essays will be due in
December 2007.
Dr. Eric Schaefer
Department of Visual and Media Arts
Emerson College
120 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 824-8861
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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu
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