In association with the inaugural 'Spaghetti Cinema' Annual Film Festival and the University of Bedfordshire.

Friday 12th April 2013

Keynote speaker: Professor Sir Christopher Frayling.

The hundreds of films that make up the Italian (or 'Spaghetti') Western genre offer heterogeneous documents of shifts in their home country's cultural outlook, as the reference points of American popular culture became ever more visible in the post-war years. Yet the myriad strands of influence that converged within, and continue to emanate from, this amorphous filmic category arguably defy discourses situated along 'national' or even 'transnational' lines. A classification always already in transit between cultures, genres and conceptions of taste, the Spaghetti Western's patterns of production, distribution and consumption display multifarious acts of 'border crossing' and translation.

This conference will offer a forum through which these and related issues surrounding this much-loved, but oft-homogenised, genre can be explored, analysed and debated. From the internationally famed works of Sergio Leone to the cult cachet of Sergio Corbucci and the prolific outputs of Giuliano Carnimeo, Gianfranco Parolini and Ferdinando Baldi, the event will reconsider the cultural significance of the Italian Western, its position within global cinema and its continuing trends of reception and appropriation around the globe. Likely topics include:
• Historical / cultural studies of the genre's production contexts.
• Genre studies: the Western, transnational hybridity etc.
• Considerations of individual films / trends within the genre.
• Studies of distribution patterns / reception across borders.
• Translation studies / cultural translation.
• The dubbing of Spaghetti Westerns in international markets.
• Fan discourses / appropriations of Spaghetti Westerns.
• International pastiches / remakes of Spaghetti Westerns.

We seek proposals for 20-minute papers, or for pre-constituted panels of three papers, that engage with any aspects of the above topic. Abstracts of not more than 300 words, along with a short biographical note, should be submitted for peer-review to spaghetticinema@beds.ac.uk by Friday December 14th 2012.

The Division of Media Arts and Production, University of Bedfordshire, Park Square, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1 3JU, UK.