UPDATE: Call for Papers
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: tobias.hochscherf at unn.ac.uk   

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: Nov. 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).

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu