Steven Spielberg Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory <http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory>
Third-Round Deadline: August 1, 2008
AREA: Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg has documented historical events, enlightened audiences with visions of scientific discovery, and gauged its consequences in dramatic and humane terms. Science acquires a distinctively narrative charm under Spielberg's direction, which often looks at the empirical world through the eyes of an innocent, often those of a child-whether he rides a bike to middle school or dons a hat and teaches at a university. The world of science and technology is, in Spielberg's vision, a world of wonder and adventure.
Danger in a Spielberg film often enters through the figure of the bureaucrat. Civilization threatens to dwarf and dehumanize the individual. What role does science-as an activity of the mind and as a product of technological practice-play in the progress of civilization? How does Spielberg regard scientific intelligence? Whom does technology benefit in his vision-and why? What role do women or minorities play in his conception of science? When does scientific accuracy matter to him? This area solicits papers that address the various conflicts in Spielberg's films between science and society.
Please send your 200-word proposal by August 1, 2008, to the Area Chair:
Professor Pat McGuire, Chair of Steven Spielberg Area
Department of Communication Arts
Media Studies, Valdosta State University
1500 N. Patterson Street, Nevins Hall #1012
Valdosta, GA 31698
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for third-round proposals: August 1, 2008.
This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film and History. Speakers will include founder John O'Connor and editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory <http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory> ).
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http://www.ScreenSite.org
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