Call for Papers “Love, Romance and Social Justice in Film” 2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television November 11-14, 2010 Hyatt Regency Milwaukee www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory Third Round Deadline: June 1, 2010 AREA: Love, Romance and Social Justice in Film Love is often depicted alongside social justice issues as a love that transcends all boundaries and challenges. In some films, the romance plot is well integrated with social justice themes and a character’s love for another person is tied to social justice. Often, one is initated into a social justice cause through love for a specific person. In other films, love seems ancillary and thrown in for Hollywood effect in a story where social justice recedes and the romance plot takes over. In many case, the romance plot is meant to build liberal empathy for causes of social justice. Sometimes this succeeds as a narrative device and at other times, this overshadows the representation and instructive value of representing social justice in films. Love, Romance and Social Justice considers the various ways in which love and social justice are simultaneously depicted in films. Such films as Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, Kimberly Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry, and Mariano Barosso’s In the Time of Butterflies come to mind as examples of Hollywood films that explore love against a backdrop of social justice. Examples from outside the United States, such as Isaac Juien’s The Passion of Remembrance, and from Bollywood such as Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan and Rakesh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang de Basanti are especially welcome to extend the discussion beyond issues of Hollywood narrative films. It would be interesting to have papers that deal with non-romantic forms of love such as mothering, heterosexual, bisexual and/or homosexual loving, and the role of gender and sexuality in the representation of love and social justice. This area, comprising multiple papers and panels welcomes papers that examine all forms and genres of films featuring love as a determining aspect of social justice and its outcomes. Possibilities include, but are not limited to, the following topics: * The representation of race, sex, and gender in relation to social justice. * Hollywood narratives and the creation of desire for social justice * New cinemas (examining films from emerging centers of production in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Mexico) * Hollywood vs Bollywood attitudes toward social justice * Love stories in the context of human rights abuses * Social class as context in films about social justice * Sexual orientation as context in romance and social justice films * Post-colonial theory, Critical Race theory and/or Gender Studies (assessing their influence on “the depiction of social justice in films) Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair: Kulvinder Arora, Area Chair University of Illinois, Chicago Gender and Women’s Studies 601 S. Morgan St Chicago IL 60625 Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (email submissions preferred) Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory<http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory>). ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu