Society for Cinema & Media Studies Conference, March 17-21, 2010
The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles, CA



Deadline for submissions to this panel: August 9, 2009 11:59 PM CST



Submissions are still welcome for a panel that considers the relationship
between film reviewing and media culture.  Those interested in submitting
have two weeks until the deadline.  Papers addressing film criticism in ways
that relate to the overall conference theme (SCMS at 50: Archiving the
Future/Mobilizing the Past) are particularly encouraged.



Cinema scholars such as Robert Kapsis, Barbara Klinger, and Charles Maland
have examined the role of reviews in discursively constructing popular
genres and directorial reputations during the Classical Hollywood era.  As
professional film critics writing for corporate-owned print publications
continue losing their jobs due to buyouts, layoffs, and reorganizations, the
past three years has witnessed a flourishing of criticism online.  Further,
the so-called “amateur” critic has risen to prominence, evidenced by review
aggregators such as Rotten Tomatoes, movie websites such as IMDB, and blogs
dedicated to film analysis and evaluation. This panel aims to investigate
not only the status of the film critic in the contemporary mediascape, but
also the impact of print and Internet film reviewing in the context of
global cinema culture.

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

- Film reviews as historical evidence
- The future of film criticism

- Canonicity, connoisseurship, and taste politics

- Reviewing, academia, and cinephilia

- Fans, audiences, and popular opinion
- Moviegoing and the DVD market

- Film criticism and film advertising
- The cultural presence of the public intellectual
- Print media vs. new media and the “professional” vs. the “amateur”
- Coverage of international/independent films, art house retrospectives, and
film festivals
- Genre definitions (e.g. David Edelstein’s coinage of “torture porn”)
- The cult of the director
- The influence of the late Manny Farber

Send 300 word abstract (including a 5 item bibliography), with full academic
CV, as separate e-mail attachments to: Will Scheibel ([log in to unmask]).
Submitters will be notified as to the status of their proposal by August 15.
Please visit the SCMS website for more details about the 2010 conference:
http://www.cmstudies.org/

Will Scheibel
Indiana University
Department of Communication & Culture
800 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405

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