Reminder – Call for chapters: Call Me by Your Name edited collection
Reminder – Call for chapters:
Call Me by Your Name edited collection
Editors: Edward Lamberti and Michael Williams
The film Call Me by Your Name (2017), adapted by James Ivory from André Aciman’s novel and directed by Luca Guadagnino, has been passionately received among audiences and critics ever since its release. A love story between seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer), and set in 1983 “Somewhere in northern Italy”, as an opening caption tells us, Call Me by Your Name presents a gay relationship in a romantic idyll seemingly untroubled by outside pressures, prejudices or tragedy. While this means it offers audiences welcome opportunities to swoon in front of an LGBTQ+ romance that equals classic heterosexual romances onscreen, its relevance or political significance today may not be immediately apparent. And yet the film is abundantly infused with narrative, thematic and stylistic elements that can be read as speaking powerfully to questions of sexual identity for modern audiences. We believe this ravishing and complex film warrants wider study.
We are therefore planning an edited collection on Call Me by Your Name. We would like to address how the film helps inform our understanding of contemporary sexual identity and romance. To what extent does it focus on Elio and Oliver’s relationship specifically and to what extent does it tell a more generalised love story? What tensions exist between the specific and the general, between the open and the hidden, between the past and the present? We are looking for chapters that will interrogate these questions in exciting and thought-provoking ways.
The film has struck a chord with so many viewers. With this wide appeal in mind, we invite proposals for chapters of 6,000-8,000 words from established scholars, early-career researchers and students. Chapters could include the following topics, individually or in combination:
- Call Me by Your Name as a romance
- Depictions of sexuality, gender and religious identity in the film
- Call Me by Your Name in relation to contemporary LGBTQ+ cinema
- Call Me by Your Name as an adaptation of André Aciman’s novel
- The place of Call Me by Your Name in director Luca Guadagnino’s body of work
- Call Me by Your Name and the work of James Ivory
- Call Me by Your Name and heritage cinema
- Analysis of the film style of Call Me by Your Name
- Analysis of specific scenes from the film
- Call Me by Your Name and the era of its story (political, economic, spectre of AIDS pandemic)
- Uses of the past/looking back, within the film and in relation to the film itself
- Call Me by Your Name and antiquity
- Production design in the film (e.g. 1980s, summer villa, Italy, towns, countryside, seclusion and openness)
- Marketing and distribution, critical reception, and audience/fan responses
- Analysis of Timothée Chalamet’s performance and emerging stardom
- Armie Hammer’s role in the film – the star as character actor
- Music in Call Me by Your Name (classical, 1980s, Sufjan Stevens’ original songs)
- Future directions of the story, such as the ‘unused’ sections of the novel and Aciman’s new sequel, Find Me (2019)
If you wish to propose a chapter, please send a 300-word proposal along with a 100-word biography to Edward Lamberti and Michael Williams at cmbyncollection@gmail.com. If you have any queries during the preparation of your proposal, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Revised contributor dates: We are mindful of the fact that the coronavirus has impacted on the work of the academic community, that new ways of working all need urgent time devoted to them to ensure that things run as smoothly as possible for all and that we all need to take enough time to look after ourselves and others. We are very keen for our Call Me by Your Name edited collection project to continue but we want to make things as easy as possible for potential contributors by building some more time into the project. We had previously announced a deadline of 6 April for sending us proposals, with contributors’ chapters to be written by September. We have decided to extend the deadline for sending us proposals to Monday 13 July. We will select the proposals that we feel will make the best combination for the collection and we will inform all those who have sent us proposals of the outcome of the selection process by Monday 3 August. We would like the selected contributors to write their chapters by Monday 18 January 2021. We hope this gives you enough time to consider putting in a proposal if you haven’t already done so and would like to. We wish all lecturers, researchers and students the very best in this challenging time.
Edward Lamberti and Michael Williams