Call for Papers
Area: Love in a Time of War
2010 Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television
November 11-14, 2010
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second Round Deadline: November 1, 2009

Area: Love in a Time of War

As war films often confirm for us, love during war is different from love in any "ordinary" time. It is often more urgent, more impulsive, more passionate, more tenuous, more selfish, more tragic. Although some reasons for this intensification are obvious, deeper reasons—which this area will explore—motivate the production of cinematic art that complicates our portrait of people and their nations. How does war, as opposed to the urgencies of disease or personal tragedy, develop or disfigure love? In what ways does being "human" change because of this process? What historical understanding does a love affair bring to a film like Casablanca or Gone with the Wind or Dr. Zhivago? Why does peacetime sometimes revise or extinguish love? How does a film successfully marry narratives of love and war?

This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes papers and panel proposals that examine all films featuring love in a time of war—anytime, anyplace. Possibilities might include, but are not limited to, the following:

Casablanca
Dr. Zhivago
For Whom The Bell Tolls
A Farewell to Arms
Gone with the Wind
Cold Mountain
Yanks
Hanover Street
From Here to Eternity
Coming Home
Pearl Harbor
30 Seconds over Tokyo
Drums Along The Mohawk
Since You Went Away
The Deer Hunter
Michael Collins
Cleopatra
The English Patient
Swing Shift
Last of The Mohicans
The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair:

Suzanne Broderick
Department of History
Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61761
slbrode@ilstu.edu (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