Forthcoming Conference: Cinema, War and a Society of Spectacle 9 June 2005, University of Cambridge The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), in association with the Cambridge University Film Seminar, invites submissions for a one-day conference on cinema and war. In light of the predominance of a binary between innocence and evil that frequently characterizes a contemporary political vernacular and Hollywood representation, the need for critical thought remains crucial. This conference will interrogate the interplay between the events of war and their representations in film and video in relation to our implication in the construction and deconstruction of such imagery. While certain representations suppress the inherent tensions and ambiguities contributing to a waršs emergence and its lasting devastation, several thinkers including Virilio, Baudrillard, Zizek and others have turned a reflexive gaze inwards upon our voyeuristic fascination. Our delight in total visibility through film and instantaneous fragments of real timeš media characterizes our time. But the thoroughness of our cultural saturation provokes questions concerning the dangers of such image assimilation. To what extent is our gaze aligned with insidious modes and bodies of power that participate in games of surveillance and paranoid rationalisations? How and why do images of destruction, which are disseminated at the speed with which weapons are engaged, enthral and mesmerize; moreover, what is at stake in our attraction? How are these images a means to identity creation, at the cost of certain exclusions and inclusions? What is at stake in the expansion of a society of spectacleš? We invite researchers, postgraduates, artists and those engaged with questions pertaining to war and its representations in film and video to forward abstracts for 20-minute papers/presentations. Interdisciplinary approaches, ranging across media, and theorizations of war in relation to philosophical, literary, cultural, political, historical, sociological, anthropological, architectural and other branches of thought are expressly encouraged. Themes might include: --propaganda, spectacle, truth --constructions of ethnicity, gender, race, class or nation and the aestheticization of war --surveillance, paranoia, voyeurism or imprisonment --visibility/invisibility --temporality, continuity/discontinuity or narrativization and comprehension --relations between cinematic and other representational and performative forms (e.g. digital media, television, literature, theatre, visual art) --the moment and instant of death One-page abstracts and short C.V.s should be sent to Conference Convenor, Nadine Boljkovac ([log in to unmask]). Deadline for submission: 17 March 2005 ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.ScreenSite.org