film and television

From its beginnings, speculative fiction across different media and genres has combined imaginaries of social and political organization with issues of gender and violence. Thomas More’s Utopia (1551), for example, imagined an egalitarian society that remained strictly patriarchal and a perfect government that ensured prosperity and peace by fighting preventive wars, administering capital punishment to adulterers, endorsing corporal punishment for unruly women and children, and encouraging (assisted) suicide. Whether we consider literary texts, film, TV series, comics, or other forms of cultural expression, contemporary speculative fiction continues to discuss (state-)violence and the gendered nature of socio-political relations.

Adapting Bridgerton

If Jane Austen and the history books present one version of the regency, Bridgerton shows a far different one. While the series had many surprises for viewers, it’s less clear what’s responsible. Does this come from being a 2020 show? From Netflix's style? From the romance novels source material? Let’s consider and also weigh what worked and what didn’t. 

Length will depend on how many submissions arrive. They will be in MLA format, secondary sources welcome, scholarly be approachable and fun for fans. These will be published in a scholarly colelction--McFarland is interested. Abstracts Due May 1, essays due August 1. 

PAMLA 2021 LAS VEGAS: "CITY OF GOD, CITY OF DESTRUCTION" (Thursday, November 11 - Sunday, November 14, 2021 at Sahara Las Vegas Hotel, hosted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Session: Crime Fiction and Film

Contacts: Cynthia Kuhn, Metropolitan State University of Denver (kuhnc@msudenver.edu)

Description: This virtual (online) session welcomes paper proposals on any aspect of This virtual (online) session invites submissions on any aspect of crime fiction and film. Given the conference theme of "City of God, City of Destruction," papers that attempt to engage with this theme are also welcome.

This global collection of essays – emerging from a session presented at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference 2021 – raises important ethical and aesthetic questions regarding narratives of serial murder. How is the serial killer constructed in World Literature and Culture by invoking or debunking Western criminological theories and detective genres? Why does a ‘murderous sublime’ dominate mainstream cinema, Netflix shows, graphic novels, and podcasts? On what historical and cultural terms, do these graphic representations of violence vacillate between notions of ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’ or ‘banality’ and ‘exceptionalism’?

This book seeks to showcase current academic debates and multiple disciplinary perspectives on adversiting. The contributions in this book will help create a comprehensive overview of of academic discourse on contemporary advertiting. Perspectives on the ethics of advertising, the challenges to measuring advertising’s impact, and the importance of professional creativity are particularly encouraged. Proposed chapters might address whether advertising is purely manipulative, whether it encourages over consumption, whether it creates monopolies, or whether it serves primarily to make the rich even richer.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Cosmopolitan Aspirations in English-Speaking Cinema and Television

26th Annual SERCIA Conference

Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain

September 8-10, 2021

In her 2014 text, All Joking Aside, Rebecca Krefting argued that “Jokesters unmask inequality by identifying the legal arrangements and cultural attitudes and beliefs contributing to their subordinated status—joking about it, challenging that which has become normalized and compulsory, and offering new solutions and strategies” (2). Humor has long been a tool for upsetting the status quo, for questioning the social institutions that exalt some, while leaving so many others behind. But does this comedic approach succeed in effecting change? What are the tangible results of challenging the existing situation?

Satire is dead: long live satire. How can political comedy retain its critical edge when reality is more absurd than even its burlesque depiction? What media and literary satire emerge in the interregnum between old and new worlds?

Papers may engage with a range of the following topics/fields:

--Satire and its relation to fake news, truthiness, and viral conspiracy theories

--Satire and media form-- film, TV, social media, video games, podcasts, stand-up, improv, media platforms, etc. (focusing on the dynamic or dialectic between media form & satirical content)

In view of recent and current global events, the phone camera has emerged as an important and effective political apparatus. The centrality, proliferation, and prominence of phone footage across contemporary screen media and media platforms suggests that the phone camera is no longer just an indulgent phone fixture, but rather, an invaluable truth-telling tool. Practical, accessible, and autonomously used, the phone camera has been an essential technology to the present-day exposures of injustice, violence, and corruption around the world.

Speculative fiction covers a broad range of narrative styles and genres.  The cohesive element that pulls works together under the category is that there is some “unrealistic” element, whether it’s magical, supernatural, or a futuristic/technological development: works that fall into the category stray from conventional realism in some way.   For this reason, speculative fiction can be quite broad, including everything from fantasy and magical realism to horror and science fiction—from China Miéville to Margaret Atwood to Philip K. Dick. This panel aims to explore those unrealistic elements and all their varied implications about society, politics, economics, and more. 

Special Issue of Screen Bodies 7.1 (March 2022): The Work of Lu Yang in Transnational Chinese and Global Contemporary Art and Visual Culture

Call for papers

Editors: Livia Monnet (University of Montreal), Gabriel Remy-Handfield (University of Montreal), Ari Heinrich (Australian National University).

Synopsis: A number of anniversaries in 2021 — including the tenth of the premiere of David Benioff and W.B. Weiss’ television series, Game of Thrones, Tom Perrotta’s novel, The Leftovers, and Terrence Malick’s film, The Tree of Life, and the twentieth of Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods — is a provocative occasion for a critical reexamination of these and related parables at the intersection of the secular and the supernatural, in their original formulations and as they have developed subsequently.

Call for Papers: Black Popular Culture-Special Topics (Deadline has been extended to February 28!)

PCA 2021 National Conference, June 2-5 (Virtual)

Popular Culture Association (PCA)

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, cinema, television, and related media have become increasingly central both to individual lives and to the lives of peoples, groups, and nations. Cinema has become a major form of cultural expression and films both reflect and influence the attitudes and behaviour of people, representing their tensions and anxieties, hopes and desires and incarnating social and cultural determinants of the era in which they were made.