[Please note that this CFP is for a single panel, rather than a conference area, comprising multiple panels. Depending on the quality and volume of submissions, however, the organizer may be open to creating additional panels.]





Call for Papers

‘Love in a Strange Land,' Women and the Post-Colonial Romance in International Cinema

2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television

November 11-14, 2010

Hyatt Regency Milwaukee

www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory



This panel looks at the way the Western constructs of romance have been exported or rewritten in the post-colonial cinema.  A canonical cinematic plot structure parallels the goals of a sympathetic protagonist in the private sphere, often romance, with her struggles in a more public sphere.  How does one condition the other?  For instance, in I Dreamed of Africa, an intrepid European woman impulsively follows her new love to his African home.  There, she struggles privately to fuse her life, his, and that of her son, while at the same time becoming involved in community debates over poaching, water rights, and land use.  As she asserts herself in the public sphere, she becomes more confident and self-actualizing in the private sphere.  Presenters may explore themes of Orientalism, `forbidden love, the exotic, the primitive, and other stereotypes, but papers are encouraged which also address contemporary issues of female subjectivity, sexual identity,  caste/class race, Third World urbanism, eco-activism, indigenaiety, mass mediation, and transnationalism as these play a part in the dynamics of film narratives about romance.  This panel explores both `problem films' -- those which unconsciously reproduce colonial relations in a new context -- and films which offer complex images of new kinds of social relations in a post-feminist, post globalized setting.



Suggestions for paper topics: 



Histories of postcolonial cinema with an emphasis on romance



Feminist theorizing of the cinematic romance in a postcolonial setting



Intercultural comparisons of romance in film



Film criticism: studies of films displaying updated colonialist mentality (Out of Africa, Blood Diamond, etc.)



Film criticism: studies of films which implicitly or explicitly critique colonialist attitudes toward `romance in a strange land.' (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala, Wedding in Galilee, etc.)



Institutional studies of directors, genres or national cinemas in which themes of post-colonial romance figure prominently (contemporary Bollywood, Nollywood, etc.)



Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the panel organizer:



Kevin J. Hagopian

Dept of Film/Video & Media Studies

18 Carnegie

Penn State University

University Park PA 16802

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