CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION

FILM AND MEDIA CONFERENCE

SHIFTING LANDSCAPES: FILM AND MEDIA IN EUROPEAN CONTEXT

JUNE 16-18, 2006

ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY, TURKEY



Within the last decade and a half, European film and media have faced new 
challenges due to the macro processes of international migration, political, 
cultural and economic globalization, as well as the gradual rise of the 
European Union as a new political-economic and cultural power bloc. Although 
there is a vein of scholarship that situates these developments in the more 
neutral realm of 'mixing of cultures', 'hybridization', 'experiences of 
border-crossing', and 'new freedoms and deterritorialization', it should be 
noted that a good portion of recent films and other works point to a series 
of significant social, economic and cultural problems such as: racism, 
sexism, unemployment, urban bias, etc. In the midst of these structural 
transformations, and 70 years after Benjamin's seminal essay, "Work of Art 
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," another element, digitization, is 
now a force majeur that is altering production, distribution and exhibition 
of artwork in an unprecedented way. Changes in both technology and the 
sociopolitical and economic spheres are manifested not only in the domain of 
artistic work itself in the form of content, aesthetics and form, but also 
in the physical sphere of social life. We now experience a constant flux of 
simultaneous fragmentation and integration through the aggregating and 
disaggregating forces of global, regional and local mobility both materially 
in terms of individual/social reality, and virtually through film, 
audiovisual media, CMC-and, more significantly, through the ongoing 
convergence of these media. While broadcasting is losing ground to 
narrowcasting, the movie theaters of the "arcades" have been replaced by the 
multiplexes of shopping malls, turning spectatorship and movie-going into a 
completely new sport and the cinematic encounter into a "viewing strip" 
where the screen extends beyond the domain of the theater and into the realm 
of a multitude of other spectacles from shop windows to LCD screens to cell 
phones.



The aim of this conference is to address the complex and intertwined issues 
in European film and audiovisual media arising from the transformations in 
technology and social/urban landscapes, and in the macro forces of economics 
and politics. These changes have significant implications for the 
production, distribution and exhibition/consumption of European audiovisual 
works, thus creating new micro-realities "within" and "across", and beyond 
the bounds of nationality, geography, space, language, ethnicity, race, 
gender and sexuality, age, socioeconomic status, etc. We invite 
contributions from researchers and professionals from a broad cross-section 
of related schools and disciplines.



Suggested areas of inquiry include (but are not limited to):



  a.. Production/Distribution/Exhibition
  b.. Film/Media and identity
  c.. Gender
  d.. Race/Ethnicity
  e.. Political economy
  f.. Urban topography/architecture and film/media
  g.. Consumption/consumer society
  h.. New media technologies
  i.. Digitization
  j.. Globalization/Regionalization
  k.. Film/Media reception
  l.. Questions of cultural imperialism
  m.. Territorialization/De-territorialization/Re-territorialization
  n.. Cultural Heritage/Preservation


Please submit a 250-word abstract by March 15, 2006, by e-mail to Serazer 
Pekerman ([log in to unmask])



Please include: Title of Paper, Full Name (s), Affiliation, Current 
Position, an e-mail address and at least 3 keywords that best describe the 
subject of your submission.

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org