Call for Papers



TEACHING TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA AND MEDIA: POLITICS AND PEDAGOGY

Edited Collection

Co-editors: Bruce Bennett (Lancaster University, 

UK) and Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)





This proposed edited collection will focus on the 

analysis of transnational cinema (also referred 

to in different contexts as “border cinema,” 

“cinema of migration,” or “cinema of 

displacement”) in conjunction with specific 

pedagogical challenges such cinema/media evoke in 

the classroom.  Coming to the foreground in the 

early 2000s, the rubric of transnational cinema 

has galvanized film and media studies, drawing 

our attention to diasporic and “accented” 

filmmaking (Naficy), but also challenging us to 

think about cinema beyond the restrictive scope 

of the nation. For various reasons, since 2000 

there has emerged a rich archive of new films 

that exemplify transnational cinema.  Examples 

from around the globe include, for instance, 

Amreeka (2009), Babel (2006), Before Night Falls 

(2000), Biutiful (2010), Children in No Man’s 

Land (2008), Dirty Pretty Things (2002), The 

Gatekeeper (2002), Gran Torino (2008), Goodbye 

Lenin (2003), In This World (2002), Last Resort 

(2000), Machete (2010), Paradise Now (2005), 

Persepolis (2007), Silent Waters (2003), Sleep 

Dealer (2008), The Syrian Bride (2004), The 

Visitor (2007), or Unveiled (2005). Collectively, 

these films engage with issues related to 

immigrant identities, transnational encounters, 

foreignness and citizenship, the politics of 

visibility, terrorism, legality, race and racism. 

National borders emerge in these films as both 

violent geopolitical constructs and abstractions 

related to ideas of difference, otherness, 

travel, migration, neo-liberal capitalism, 

neo-colonialism and transcultural translation.



As the field of transnational cinema and media 

studies has been developing, scholars of cinema 

and media have not thus far turned their 

systematic attention to pedagogical practices. 

Discussions of teaching practices occur but they 

are mainly located in the fields of rhetoric, 

education and communication, or, occasionally, in 

gender studies. As more film scholars engage with 

transnational cinema in the classroom, our goal 

is to explore the complexities of teaching with 

and about such cinema, addressing such questions 

as: What happens when our students encounter the 

“foreignness” of various films, texts, and ideas 

in the classroom? How might teachers make the 

topics raised in transnational texts – national 

(un)belonging, racial tensions, cross-cultural 

encounters, difference, intimacy and family, the 

politics of anger – relevant, even urgent, to our 

students, a lot of whom have not knowingly 

brushed against experiences of immigration and 

foreignness? How do we avoid “consumerist” 

emotionality in teaching such complex topics? How 

might one implicate “the local” in “the global” 

and encourage students to see beyond their own 

borders of social and cultural contexts? How 

might we imbricate the transnational into one’s 

pedagogical practices so that issues of 

foreignness, migration, and dislocation begin to 

produce what we call “affective openings,” that 

is, an openness toward new ways of thinking about 

resistance to oppressive forms of phobic 

nationalisms and exclusionary practices of citizenship?



We hope to include a variety of theoretical 

perspectives from scholars with experience of 

teaching in diverse locations. We invite 

contributions that consider innovative pedagogies 

and think critically about such embodied 

experiences as spectatorial identification or 

disidentification and estrangement, spectatorial 

consumption of foreignness and “otherness,” 

culturally-mediated desire for “proper” 

representations of immigration, migration, or 

foreignness, or what Elspeth Probyn calls 

“affective reactions” in the classroom and their 

“management.” We also invite contributions that 

reflect upon the value of transnational cinema as 

educational tool or ‘weapon’  (Solanas and 

Getino), and the institutional politics of 

teaching and working in this area within 

universities and colleges in an increasingly 

neo-liberal global context and in the face of the 

“post-ideological” turn in many arts, humanities 

and social science disciplines.



Please submit a 500-word abstract and a short bio 

by September 15, 2013 to Bruce Bennett 

(<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]) 

and Katarzyna Marciniak (<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]).



Bruce Bennett

Director of Film Studies

Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts

Lancaster University

LA1 4YW



Katarzyna Marciniak

Professor and Co-Editor of Global Cinema

Transnational Studies

Department of English

Ohio University

Athens, OH 45701











   



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