Edited Collection: Dieu soit loué! Roman Catholicism in French Cinema and Film Adaptations
Edited Collection: Dieu soit loué! Roman Catholicism in French Cinema and Film Adaptations
deadline for abstract submissions:
March 1, 2017
Deadline for full articles
September 15, 2017
contact email:
We are seeking 250-word essay proposals for an edited collection on the representations of Roman Catholicism – religious faith, practices, and tendencies – in French cinema of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the twentieth century, films such as Paul Gury’s Le Curé de village (1949), Julien Duvivier’s Le Petit Monde de Don Camillo (1951), or Jean-Pierre Mocky’s Un drôle de paroissien (1963) underline the importance and pervasiveness of Catholicism in both rural and urban settings. In the second half of the twentieth century, tongue-in-cheek comedies such as Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (Jean Yanne, 1972), The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (Gérard Oury, 1973), or Etienne Chatiliez’s La vie est un long fleuve tranquille (1988) dare to criticize religious dogma and to discuss, compare, or demystify religious practices and belief systems. More recently, there has been a return to a more serious interrogation of religious faiths and practices, for instance in Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois, 2010) or the box office hit Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu (2014). It could be argued that the more recent representations of Catholicism and, it should be noted, other world religions in French cinema reflect the progressive de-Christianization of France and its openness to other beliefs and value systems. However, it seems that despite France’s continued secularization, Catholic values and traditions have retained their influence on today’s French culture and society. This interdisciplinary edited collection aims to deepen our understanding of the roles played by Roman Catholicism in French culture and society, through the lens of cinematic themes, techniques and through a variety of theoretical approaches. We also encourage proposals on contact zones with other religions, in particular Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Full essays included in this edited collection will be approximately 5000 words, referenced in Chicago author-date style (16th edition). Final articles, written in English, will be submitted to a university press and undergo blind peer-review. The anticipated date for publication is 2019.
Please send a one-page CV and 250-word abstract to catholicisminfrenchmovies@gmail.com by March 1, 2017.
Any questions can be sent to: Dr. Christa Jones or Dr. Caroline Mosser at