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April 2012, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Cynthia Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 8 Apr 2012 16:10:11 -0400
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CALL FOR PAPERS
"Crime and Punishment: Mythologizing the Law"
An area of multiple panels for the Film & History Conference on “Film and Myth”
September 26-30, 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
Deadline: June 1, 2012

Films and television seem to increasingly focus on issues of law, depicting persons, groups, events, and places implicated in the making, breaking, enforcing, and ignoring of various legal codes. How do these images portray those involved with various sides of the law, from those who uphold it – such as police and government agents – to those who violate it? What about those whose relationship to crime and punishment is mythologized as one of neutrality, such as judges, lawyers and mediators? How do these portrayals change according to their historical moments? What do we, as audiences, understand to be the imagined qualities of law and order?

This area welcomes papers on all aspects of law, crime, punishment, and the myths that surround and inform them in film and television. While television series depicting controversial subject matter, such as Sons of Anarchy and Law and Order SUV, or Peter Gunn and Boston Blackie, offer what might only seem like polar opposites of crime and punishment, films such as Dirty Harry and Vigilante Force, the Jason Borne series, and The Punisher complicate this simple binary opposition, asking the audience to consider the complexities of retribution through vengeance and recuperation through transgression. Justice, these narratives tell us, is not always legal, and reckoning does not always supply closure.
   
This area, comprising multiple panels, will encompass all aspects of the mythological uses of crime and punishment in films and television programs. Papers that explore how such myths are played out in multiple cultures outside the US and UK are especially welcome. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
 
Police Drama: Mean Streets and Even Meaner Cops
City Saviors: Good Cop, Good Cop
Do It Yourself: Vigilantes
Iconic Figures: Dirty Harry to SVU
TV Heroes: Cops and P.Is of the 1950s & 1960s
Movie Sleuths: Before 1960, Sam Spade to The Thin Man
Lawyers: Courtroom Drama
 
Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by June 1, 2012:

Charles R. Hamilton, Area Chair, 2012 Film & History Conference
"Crime and Punishment: Mythologizing the Law"
Northeast Texas Community College
Email: [log in to unmask]

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