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November 2007, Week 1

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From:
Cynthia Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 4 Nov 2007 13:48:51 -0500
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ANIMAL Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Animal Films
From Bambi to March of the Penguins, animal films have represented human values, recorded life in the non-human world, and influenced perceptions of animal nature. Just as the medium of film connects its audience with faraway or fantastical places in other genres, so does it provide glimpses of animal lives they might otherwise not know¬geographically and temporally.
This area seeks paper and panel proposals that examine images of animals and address the broader implications of these constructions. Have fictional representations affected the work of documentary film-makers? What value does wildlife footage have for animal science and conservation?  What relationships do animal films form or dissolve with humans?
Paper topics might include:
Animals in fiction and the socio-cultural effects of such "nature fakery"
The construction of animal lives in documentaries
The role of animal films in environmentalism and wildlife conservation
Portrayals of pets, tamed animals, and wildlife
Human relationships with animals
Role of visual and audio techniques and technologies in field photography
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to:
Kelly Enright, Chair of the Animal Area
Department of History
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
16 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ  08901-1004
[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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
Call for Papers
WOMEN IN THE SCIENCES Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.filmandhistory.org
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: "Count Me In!": Rallying Women in the Sciences 
Recently the Sunday Boston Globe debunked "The Difference Myth", blasting claims that boys and girls (fast forward to men and women) think, learn, and need to be treated as species from a separate planet.  Nevertheless, blanket generalizations continue to abound, layering insinuation and insulation on top of the old and increasingly creaky frame of females being incapable of competing with males in math and the sciences.  Despite new federal pressure urging schools to rewind time and to segregate students by gender, women continue to defy expectations, ascending to presidencies in scientific towers such as MIT and Lehigh University. 
Still, nationally, women remain largely invisible and underrepresented in the sciences.  No wonder, then, that the areas of film and television are moving to illuminate and to fill the void.  Examining early book-to-film successes of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and Dian Fossey's "Gorillas in the Midst", solution-seeking documentaries "The Gender Chip Project" and "Women Who Walk Through Time", television fantasies of bionic women, crime science investigators, spaceship personnel and aliens, and questioning heroines such as Marlee Matlin in "What the Bleep?!...", this area will serve to spotlight portrayals (or absences) of women in the sciences or science fiction.
We welcome papers which explore questions concerning women and their roles in the sciences.  Topics are not restricted to American media representations.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Sally Hilgendorff, Chair, Women in the Sciences
Email: [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
CODE BREAKING: LOW & HIGH TECH SPOOKING AND WHODUNITS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Code Breaking: Low & High Tech Spooking and Whodunits
Successful military or political code breaking is akin to glancing at an opponent's hole card in Texas Hold 'Em. This is a secretive art often left unexamined by professional historians. In 1950, Punch magazine labeled Brigadier Desmond Young's Rommel: The Desert Fox "brilliant." But Young later learned that both Rommel and the British command were deciphering each other's messages throughout the war.
Breaking the Japanese Purple code did not prevent Pearl Harbor(Tora, Tora, Tora,) but it brought victory at Midway (Midway). Other films probing this clandestine world include many of the James Bond productions, political thrillers (from Three Days of the Condor to Sneakers), historical romances (Enigma), buddy films (Windtalkers), or military adventure dramas (U-571). And documentaries investigate the activities of Bletchley Park and the National Security Agency's "The Puzzle Palace."
Whodunits and mysteries abound, be they fact, semi-fiction, or fantasy. You may wish to explore situations in which code breakers, to preserve their secret, did not impede an enemy action. Or perhaps speculate on what other code-breaking treasure troves might be awaiting later-generation historians. Whose interests does each code-breaking film represent? What patterns in plot and characterization emerge? Which histories are embellished or tarnished through these kinds of films?
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to:
Keith Wheelock, Chair
Code Breaking: Low & High Tech Spooking and Whodunits
325 Mountain View Road
Skillman, NJ 08558
Email: kwheelock@ patmedia.net
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 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).
***
COMPARISONS IN NON-FICTION SCIENCE FILMS AND TELEVISION Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Comparisons: Science / Medical Films And Television
The time is ripe to begin to synthesize a broad historical account of non-fiction science films and television. Up until recently, most historians and media critics have tended to analyze science in film and television through individual case studies, through micro-histories of individual films or programmes, or through close accounts of singular image artifacts (as with the series of articles by the late Roger Silverstone and his book on Britain's BBC2 mainstay "Horizon").  Other studies look at how science affects periods or genres, such as "New Deal" films or animal films, or at how science in film and television is shaped by different national cultures.
But, whether for the sake of broader understanding of the cultural history of science, or to enhance scientific citizenship, or to enhance pedagogy, it is necessary to build a broader account of the history of science in non-fiction moving image media. Accordingly, this area invites contributions that contain comparisons between different non-fiction representations of science, technology and medicine, or alternatively that deliberately offer themselves up for comparative treatment.
Possible Comparative Questions:
-  Have co-production deals dissolved international differences in 
   science television documentary style?
-  Is television (or film) documentary influenced by scientists more in
   some periods or places than in others?
-  Is science and medical documentary drama more significant in some eras 
   than others? If so, why?
-  Do some medical specializations get better coverage in one country or 
   era and not in another?
-  What similarities and differences are there between health-education
   films from different countries and regimes in the same period?
-  Have nature films been effectively the same since 1900?
-  Do different kinds of audiences watch science films in different
   countries?
Comparative topics:
-  Scale in science films: microscopic vs. macroscopic imaging
-  Clinical vs. Public Health films
-  Brain vs. Heart
-  Differential depictions of men and women, of different races, of
   animals vs. people.
Please send initial enquiries at any time or a 300-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
Tim Boon
Chief Curator,
The Science Museum
London SW7 2DD UK
[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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
DARWIN & THE EVOLUTION/"INTELLIGENT DESIGN" AFTERMATH Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Darwin & the Evolution/"Intelligent Design" Aftermath
Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859) created an uproar around the world, as did The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).  The idea of evolution had been accepted by most scientists already, but Darwin established the actual mechanics, and his work has become a cornerstone of biology, paleontology, and genetics ever since.
Proponents of "Creation" or "Intelligent Design," a cosmology linked most often to the Bible, still challenge the principles and facts of evolution, however.  According to Gallup polls, nearly 50% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form.  From the Scopes trial in Tennessee (vividly depicted in Inherit the Wind [1961, 1999]) to current school-board controversies across the country, the science of evolution has been under attack.  How have film and television reacted to this battle?  Has evolution theory revised the stories we tell about the world and ourselves?  And what are the consequences to schools and museums, to intellectual and political life, to popular culture and historical record?
We welcome proposals on any aspect of this controversy. While the debate occurs frequently in the United States, we also appreciate proposals that examine how this controversy is experienced in other countries.
Send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008, to
Keith Wheelock, Area Chair
Department of History
Raritan Valley Community College
325 Mountain View Road
Skillman, NJ 08558
Phone: 609-466-5968
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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
THE DAVID CRONENBERG Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg is a Canadian film director and one of the principal originators of what is generally called the body horror or veneral horror genre, which explores fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, Cronenberg intertwines the psychological with the physical in what he has termed "the New Flesh," which, in the first half of his career, he explored through the science fiction and horror genres. In more recent years, Cronenberg explores these themes in films that have expanded beyond these genres. Typically, Cronenberg's films straddle the line between personal chaos and confusion. Cronenberg has said that his films should be seen "from the point of view of the disease" and that disease and disaster, in his work, are less problems to be overcome than agents of personal transformation.
Over the course of his career, Cronenberg's films follow a definite progression, a movement from the social world to the inner life. In his early low-budget films, scientists modify human bodies, resulting in social anarchy (e.g. They Came From Within (aka Shivers) in 1975 and Rabid in 1977. In his middle period, the chaos wrought by the scientist is more personal, (e.g. The Brood in 1979, 1981's  Scanners, and 1983's Videodrome). In the later period, after his adaptation of Stpehen King's novel The Dead Zone in 1983, Cronenberg focuses on the scientist himself who is altered by his experiment (e.g. Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly). This trajectory culminates in 1988's Dead Ringers, in which a twin pair of gynecologists spiral into the depths of codependency and drug addiction. Cronenberg's later films tend more to the psychological, often contrasting subjective and objective realities (his adaptations of  William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch in 1991 and M. Butterfly in 199!
 3, eXistenZ in 1999, and Spider in 2002), as well as personal transformation (as in 1996's Crash, in which individuals who have been injured in car crashes attempt to view their ordeal as "a fertilising rather than a destructive event".) His most recent work, the thriller A History of Violence (2005), is one of his highest budgeted and most mass audience-accessible to date.
Paper topics might include  the implications of "The New Flesh," the themes of revolution, invasion, and transformation, the presence of existentialism and agnosticism in Cronenberg's work, gender, alterity, addiction, creativity, the nature of reality, the dangers of science and hubris, the influence of media, specifically television and video games, the use of myth, and the effects of violence, among others.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
James Yates, Chair of the David Cronenberg Area
Department of English, Foreign Language, and Humanities
Northwestern Oklahoma State Unviersity
Alva, Oklahoma 73717
Phone: 580.327.8469
Email: [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
DIFFERENT BODIES: DISABILITY, IMPAIRMENT & ILLNESS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Different Bodies  
The rise of the disability rights movement over the last forty years, the emergence of disability studies in the humanities, and critical works in the field of film and television, such as Martin F. Norden's The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disabilities in the Movies and Charles A. Riley II's Disability and the Media, suggest that body differences-through disability, impairment, and illness-lie at the heart of our media heritage:  they appear in some of the most popular films of early cinema, in the rhetoric of wartime propaganda, and in contemporary narratives about our culture's most closely held values: individualism, self-determination, and community membership. How have different bodies been represented in film from its earliest era? How have these representations worked to construct American or other national or cultural identities? How have they been used to mediate historical events or shape civic opinion? How has the dominance of science and medicine i!
 n American culture intersected with the representation of disability, impairment, or illness? 
This area welcomes presentations on disability, impairment, and/or illness in film, television, or video from any era, including silent films (The Light That Came, Orphans of the Storm), post-WWII injury narratives (The Best Years of Our Lives, Pride of the Marines), biopics and docudramas (The Miracle Worker, My Left Foot), public-service television and videos (Muscular Dystrophy Telethons), public-health initiatives and instructional films, newsreels and broadcast media, documentaries (Nazi Medicine, Murderball), blockbuster dramas (The Three Faces of Eve, Elephant Man), comedies (Pumpkin, Monk), fantasized impaired or disabled bodies (Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands), actualities and direct cinema, international film, and disability or impairment readings of science fiction or medical films (The Thing, Aliens). 
Presentations may focus on analyses of individual works, explorations of particular oeuvres, discussions of the material or cultural circumstances of production, or investigations of disability, impairment, or illness history or culture in relation to film. Papers that address the representation of science or medicine in the portrayal of different bodies are particularly encouraged, as are those that consider films in their historical context.
Paper topics might include cultural and historical notions of disease, health, independence, adulthood, and citizenship, class, race, gender, the psycho-social dynamics of charity, idealized bodies, medicalized bodies, illness or impairment metaphors, economic and physical access to means of production, the impact of genre expectations, the dynamics of translation (ASL to written subtitles), wartime media and propaganda, the promotion of science, American mythology, national identity, or other body-related issues in film and television.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Marja Mogk, Chair of Different Bodies
Department of English         
California Lutheran University                  
60 West Olsen Road #3900
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
805-493-3394
Email: mmogk at callutheran.edu 
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 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).
***
ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTARIES:  ASSESSING THE REEL ENVIRONMENT Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Environmental Documentaries
With An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore proved the power of documentary to teach a public audience about environmental issues, a power that was taken seriously by the Motion Picture Academy of the Arts.  Lesser-known environmental documentaries, often used in science classes or shown on television, deserve critical attention, as well.  Films like Cane Toads, Blue Vinyl, and Up Close and Toxic invite significant methodological, aesthetic, and political questions: How do filmmakers translate science/scientific issues for public consumption? How do documentary and fictional treatments of similar environmental topics compare with each other? How can grassroots documentary films be used for political change?
This area invites analyses of all varieties of environmental documentaries, including international films (e.g., Taj Mahal--Beyond the Love Story, India; Washed Away, Canada; A Big Lake, Belgium) and films on topics ranging from pollution, recycling, transportation, energy, food, land management, radiation, toxicity, etc.  Presentations may feature analyses of individual films and/or TV programs from historical perspectives (Nanook to Harlan County, USA) or in terms of stylistic elements, production values, funding, etc. Genres might include TV programs, instructional films, newsreels and broadcast media, as well as traditional documentaries (both short and feature-length).
Paper topics might include:
*         Comparisons between films like An Inconvenient Truth and The
          Day After Tomorrow
*         Conflicts between "Man and Nature" or the human impact on the 
          environment
*         Global pollution problems (e.g., Mercury: A Hazard without 
          Borders)
*         The use of environmental documentaries in science education
*         An analysis of documentaries about the same topic but reaching 
          opposite conclusions
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008to
Sharon Zuber, Chair of the Environmental Documentaries Area
College of William and Mary
English and Film Studies
P.O. 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187
Phone:  757-221-3939; FAX:  757-221-1844
Email:  [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
"FANTASTISCH" ¬ GERMAN SCIENCE-FICTION FILMS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: "Fantastisch" ¬ German Science-Fiction Films
This Area looks at German history and its distinct epochs (or even transepochal aspects) via the genre of the Science Fiction film.  Ranging from the 'paper-mâché'-ish beginnings of early German cinema to the digital high-gloss landscapes of today's virtual worlds, the Science Fiction film has responded to historical currents by gauging (often unconsciously) the moods, anxieties, hopes, and fantasies of a society.  How has German culture reinvented itself through fantasy films?  How has German SF, as a genre, reacted to the politics, the technology, popular culture and of its day?
The paper topics could, for instance, focus on the following themes:
-         the dreams and/or nightmares resulting from the incipient
         industrial modernism in early silent pictures
-       the articulated presentiments and paranoia emerging against the
         background of totalitarianism during the time of the Weimar
         Republic and the early 1930s (e.g., the German exile movie)
-      the desire for purity and the staging of fascist fantasies 
         of 'Weltherrschaft' during the National Socialism movement
-        the attempt to draft new and better worlds during immediate
         post-war periods in order to overcome the culpable past and to 
         recreate the society
-        utopian sites in the course of revolts towards the end of the 
         1960s and in the new social movements as from the 1970s
-        dystopian projections of the future during the Cold War and 
         societal upheavals during the 1980s
-       (post-)apocalyptic scenarios of doom after the collapse of the 
         Eastern Bloc, especially after 9/11
Further analytical topics are possible:
-          the sci-fi movie of the GDR
-          transnational effects and their cinematic adaptation
-          other historical events or historiographies
Both trans-epochal aspects and intra-epochal aspects intrinsic to the genre of German Science Fiction films are likewise possible:
-          utopias/dystopias of gender
-          animals/monsters
-          science and mechanization
-          the writing of history projected into the future
-          bodies and automatons
-          religious or apocalyptic projections in the course of the 20th
           century
-          historical analysis of the reception of foreign/US-American 
           Science Fiction films
Although this Area identifies cinematic productions, television programs and serials, as well as the adaptation of film to and from television, are likewise most welcome.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
Massimo Perinelli, Chair of the German Science-Fiction Area
Anglo-Amerikanische Abteilung
Historisches Seminar
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
University of Cologne
D-50923 Cologne
+49 (0)221-470 2412
Email to: [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
HARRY POTTER AND LORD OF THE RINGS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings
Upon the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in November, 2001, critic Roger Ebert proclaimed the film "a classic," predicting that it would be enjoyed for generations to come, much like The Wizard of Oz. A month later, he once again invoked the 1939 MGM classic in his review of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In doing so, Ebert (perhaps inadvertently) hit on two important qualities shared by the series: their roots in the fantastic and their appeal to mythological structures ¬ qualities that might make them especially relevant and appealing in the culturally divisive post-9/11 era.
The phenomenal popularity of both film series might suggest a revitalization of the genre film as a locus of contemporary mythology. To what extent do the conflicts in Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings mirror Western and global power struggles? How does the reliance on magic in both series tie into current debates over religion and science? How have these films (and others like them) sparked a renewed critical interest in structuralism, anthropology, and sociology? How do mythologies of magic control or revise scientific discourse? Does it matter that the Lord of the Rings films come from a more "literary" source than the pop-fiction of Harry Potter?  Or does the very popularity of the latter series strengthen its potential for mythologizing?
Papers and panels are invited on the topics of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series (novels-to-films or films alone). Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:
Issues of adaptation
Fantasy genres
Psychological models
Mythological structures
Anthropological analyses
Gender and sexuality
Textual analysis
Publishing and/or film distribution practices
The films' use (or creation) of stars
Technological innovations in the films
Political allegory
Religious allegory
Fan cultures
Reception studies
Please submit all proposals by May 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Dr. Rodney Hill
School of Liberal Arts
Georgia Gwinnett College
1000 University Center Lane
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
678-407-5745
[log in to unmask]
Submissions by email are encouraged.
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for first-round proposals: November 1, 2007; second-round deadline: May 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).
***
IS RESISTANCE REALLY FUTILE? Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
Area: IS RESISTANCE REALLY FUTILE?
Ever since Le Voyage dans la Lune and Metropolis, Science Fiction films have traditionally represented science through futuristic technology, which both mediates the environment and often threatens to replace it (and eventually humans themselves?). This relationship with futuristic technology¬its effects on the human body, mind, and soul¬has been the subject of countless dramatizations, from Blade Runner and I, Robot to The Island and Gattaca, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, or Futurama. We gauge the power and danger of science (and scientists) by trying to imagine the technology that will evolve from it.
What do these representations of technological development tell us about today's values, hopes, and concerns about science? How does our technological environment induce our adaptation, and how do SF films suggest we should resist the technology borne from science? What lines between human, cyborg, android, and machine must we maintain? What social and political technocracies must we resist?
This area investigates the effects of scientific and technological development on the conception of future identities, selves, and minds of man/machine as portrayed through Science Fiction film and television. Panels may adress this theme via a wide range of topics, such as 'Memories of the Future', 'Reproduction Tomorrow', 'Mind of the Machine', and others. Presentations could feature (but are not limited to) analyses of individual films and/or TV programs from the perspective of genre history, strategies of representation, narrative structures, or film technology, or could deal with the  work of a single author/film maker¬for example, 'Adaptions of the Philip K. Dick Stories', 'The Universe according to G. Roddenberry', or 'Matrices and Makers'. Papers focussing on aspects of SF relating to Identity/Self/Mind could do so from the perspective of alternate/virtual realities, technological catastrophies, future wars, man vs. machine, robots/androids/cyborgs, biotech and cloni!
 ng, intelligent architecture, AI, transcendence, etc.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
Carsten Hennig, Chair of the IS RESISTANCE REALLY FUTILE? Area
Petterweilstr. 51
60385 Frankfurt/Germany
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +49(0)69-46994233
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 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).
***
MONSTERS, MAD SCIENTISTS, AND MEN FROM OUTER SPACE Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
Area:  Monsters, Mad Scientists, and Men from Outer Space
What happens when science goes horribly wrong?  When nature spins out of control?  What do we make of unknown beings that boldly menace the frontiers of civilization, or silently infiltrate them and walk among us?
This area takes an in-depth look at science gone awry in the "B"s ¬ the low-budget films of Hollywood's Golden Age that delivered thrills and adventure to local movie houses and drive-in theaters for more than three decades.  Often dismissed as "quickies" made on-the-cheap that drew audiences through sensationalism and exploitation, B-Movies nonetheless were active participants in America's imaginings of science, technology, nature, and human nature.  The "Monsters, Mad Scientists, and Men from Outer Space" Area explores the cultural, social, and political fantasies, fears, and morality tales given shape and form in the classic "B"s and their off-shoots.
Paper topics might include films on invasions, mutations, zombies, the undead, madness, space exploration ("Attack of the Crab Monsters," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"); science-fiction hybrids ("Phantom Empire"); classic "B" or exploitation directors (Sam Newfield, Roger Corman, Don Siegel); along with interrelated historical, theoretical, and socio-cultural concerns.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to:
Cynthia Miller, Area Chair
Scholar-in-Residence
Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
Emerson College
120 Boylston St.
Boston, MA 02116
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. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 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).
***
SCIENCE FICTION IN BRITISH FILM AND TELEVISION Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Science Fiction in British Film and Television    
The consistent quality of science-fiction films and television programs
in Britain has won audiences for generations, both in the UK and around
the world. One reason for this sustained popularity lies in the ability
of British cinema and TV to constantly reinvent the genre, keeping it
socially and philosophically elastic. How, for example, has British
science fiction adapted to changes in the political and social climate
or affected national policy or civic character? How have SF films and
television programs represented Britain's concerns about the present or
future or about the use and perception of history?  What makes science
fiction film and television in Britain distinctively "British"?
This area treats the last century of science fiction productions, from
Maurice Elvey's The Tunnel (1935) and William Cameron Menzies' Things to
Come (1936) to the landmark TV productions The Quatermass Experiment
(1953), 1984 (1954), A for Andromeda (1961), and the latest Doctor Who.
Presentations may feature analyses of individual films and/or TV
programs, surveys of documents related to their production, analyses of
history and culture as explored through a set of films/TV programs, or
comparisons between two or more science-fiction productions. 
Paper topics might include utopian and dystopian films/TV programs,
future warfare, censorship, representation of non-human life forms,
politics, the Cold War, science-fiction after 9/11, ethics and morals,
representations of science and scientists, myths and legends, terrorism,
early science fiction, adaptations, comedy, government and institutions,
disasters, environment, gender, ethnicity, race, class, etc.
Please note that all accepted papers will be considered for an anthology
on British Science Fiction in Film and Television.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
Tobias Hochscherf, Chair, Science Fiction in British Film and TV
Northumbria University                                
School of Arts and Social Sciences                              
Media & Communication           
Lipman Bldg.                            
Newcastle upon Tyne                             
NE1 8ST                                 
United Kingdom  
Phone: ++44(0)191-227-4932               
Email: [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
SCIENTIFIC ICONS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Scientific Icons
Beginning with The Story of Louis Pasteur in the late 1930s, a small but steady stream of films -- documentaries, dramas, and occasional comedies--have focused on the great scientists of the past.  Newton, Darwin, and Einstein have all had their turns on screen, as have J. Robert Oppenheimer (Day One, Fat Man and Little Boy, and the award- winning The Day After Trinity), Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist),  James Watson and Francis Crick (The Race for the Double Helix), Marie and Pierre Curie (Madame Curie), and many others. These films have, for better or worse, a key role in shaping the public understanding of how science works.
This area welcomes all papers that deal with films and television programs depicting real scientists whose work was important enough or influential enough to give them iconic status at the time the film was made. The list of scientists in the preceding paragraph is meant to be suggestive, but by no means exhaustive.  "Scientist" is meant, for the purposes of this area, to include medical researchers (as in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet or And the Band Played On) but to exclude engineers and inventors (as in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell and Young Thomas Edison).
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
* Depictions of historic scientists in specific films or television
  programs
* Depictions of a particular scientist in multiple films and/or
  television programs
* Real scientists, fictionalized (Edward Teller/Dr. Strangelove, T. H.
  Huxley/Professor Challenger)
* Historic scientists on the A&E network's Biography
* Historic scientists in classroom films
* Use of dramatic conventions in telling "real" stories about scientists
* Real scientists in non-US film and television
* Documentaries about historic scientists
* Historic scientists as supporting players (e.g. Lord Kelvin in the 2005
  Around the World in Eighty Days)
* Patterns: Who gets films made about them? Who gets overlooked?
Please send your 200-word proposal (email is fine) by May 1, 2008 to:
A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Social and International Studies Department
Southern Polytechnic State University
1100 South Marietta Parkway
Marietta, GA 30060
Email: [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 second-round proposals: May 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).
***
THE SOUND OF THE FUTURE: MUSIC AND EFFECTS IN FILM Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Visions of the Future Through Music in Film
From Flash Gordon and Sun Ra's Space is the Place to Star Wars and Children of Men, music and musical effects affect how we understand film.  In science fiction, music plays an especially important role--suggesting alternative perceptions, confounding or confirming our sense of time or space, indicating possible worlds, giving texture to extraordinary states of consciousness, making the progress of the world beyond the present both strange and palpable.  Music operates in complex layers, integrating the narrative of a film at multiple levels of sensation and presenting a dense interpretive field for the audience.
Papers can look at a wide range of topics involving the use of music in the science-fiction film.  How much can the aural help to create our visions of the future and of "progress"?  In what way have specific artists or directors sought to use music in creating or characterizing their visions of tomorrow or of somewhere far, far away?  What lineages have certain musical texts left in film production?  All these questions and more are welcome in this area that will seek to explore how music creates future worlds.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to
Mathew J. Bartkowiak, Chair: THE SOUND OF THE FUTURE Area
[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 second-round proposals: May 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).
 
 
 

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