Call for Papers
SHAKESPEARE AND TECHNOLOGY Area
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008

AREA: Shakespeare Films and Science

Films and television adaptations of Shakespeare often herald the artistic
achievements of technology. George Méliès’s Hamlet (1907) and The Tempest
(1913) capitalized on the visual magic of editing and placed special
effects at the center of filmmaking. In 1948, Laurence Olivier shot
Hamlet with Dickinson’s slick monochromatic approach to cinematography,
perfecting the Black-and-White medium. And Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet, by
contrast, reveled in color and texture, dramatizing the full text(s) on
screen, yielding a DVD bonanza for pause-play audiences. Other
Shakespeare films have incorporated technology in radical and provocative
ways. How has this technology shaped our understanding of Shakespeare?
And how have Shakespearean texts, in turn, influenced the evolution of
20th-century film technology?

This area investigates the social, cultural, historical interpretations
of Shakespeare’s plays as portrayed through film and television.
Presentations may feature analyses of individual films and/or TV
programs, surveys of documents related to the production of films, or
investigations of history, culture, and society as explored through
Shakespearean films. Genres might include classic films, Hollywood
blockbusters, TV programs or mini-series, docudramas, newsreels and
broadcast media, war films, national cinemas, music videos, avant-garde
films, direct cinema, and stage performances attempting to interpret
Shakespeare’s plays.

Paper topics might include dramatized science, English civil or overseas
wars, national security and insecurity, ethics and morals, reel
representations of theatrical mechanism, cinematic innovations (e.g.,
film editing, mise-en-scène, moving cameras, visual spectacle, or
settings) versus theatrical designs (e.g., tiring-house, trap door,
heavens, huts, raised platform, or canopied state), adaptation, society,
magic versus witchcraft, myths, government and institutions, politics,
ideologies, health, safety, environment, gender, ethnicity, race, class,
etc.

Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008, to the area chair:

Fan-yu (Anita) In, Lecturer
Feng Chia University
No. 100, Wenhwa Rd., Seatwen, Taichung,
Taiwan 40724, R.O.C.
Email: anitabrucy_at_hotmail.com

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each
presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-
round proposals: May 1, 2008.

This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial
Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film
and History. Speakers will include founder John O’Connor and editor Peter
C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to the University of
Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Visions of the
Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering
Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of
Physics at Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies,
Science, & the End of the World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston,
our Keynote Speaker. For updates and registration information about the
upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website
(www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).

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Received on Wed Jan 16 2008 - 12:21:43 EST