Call for Conference Papers 

The Off-Screen 

Film and Media Studies 

Georgia State University, Atlanta 

February 23-24, 2023 | In-person/Virtual 

Hosted by the GSU FMT Graduate Theory Study Group 

Submission Deadline: December 20, 2022 

Keynote Speakers (Appearing in person): 

Sulgi Lie (Visiting Professor of Art Theory and Aesthetics, Berlin University of the Arts) Daniel Morgan (Chair & Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago) 

The Graduate Students in the Moving Image Studies program in the School of Film, Media &  Theatre at Georgia State University, invite proposals for a conference on the topic of the “off screen.” Where or what is “off-screen”? This once-moot question presses forward again in this age  of scrolling, swiping, and media convergence; thus, we are moved to ask it again.  

Because the “off-screen” seems both constitutive and elusive of the moving image, we prefer to  ask “when?” or “how?” As the off-screen is always on the move, perhaps we ought to track its production, trace those zones of action and mediation where “on” conjures “off” in acts of  prestidigitation, as they appear formally, materially, phenomenologically, and historically. “On”  and “off” are, of course, temporal terms as much as they are spatial. The off-screen takes time,  dispatches with time, disperses time, erases time. 

Concentrating on the presence or suggestion of the “off-screen,” we can identify an out-of-field  occupied by the spectator, one coinciding with the screen before them and beyond, whether  spatially or temporally. Which suggests the question, what do we do with the off-screen, and what  does it do, in the end, ‘interactively,’ with us? 

To answer this question, we provide the following list of binaries as a prompt for thinking about  the topic of the off-screen that we hope will inspire paper proposals:

1 

-Inside/Outside 

-Internal/External 

-Front/Back 

-Above/Underneath 

-Distance/Proximity 

-Full/Empty 

-Surface/Depth 

-Enveloped/Between 

-Horizontal/Vertical 

-Single/Multiple 

-Motion/Stillness 

-Passage/Blockage 

-Closed/Open

-Volume/Plane 

-Expansion/Contraction 

-Defigure/Refigure 

-Center/Edge 

-Synchrony/Asynchrony 

-Porosity/Compartmentalization -Sound/Silence 

-Ambience/Void 

-Here/There 

-Visible/Invisible 

-Lossy/Lossless 

-Compression/Decompression -Centrifugal/Centripetal

We invite papers – by early scholars and graduate students especially – that explore the off-screen across a wide range of moving-image media including film, television, video, streaming, mobile  media, analog and digital, games, VR, single and multi-channel, and platformed, scrolled, and  swiped. 

The GSU FMT Graduate Theory Study Group’s conference on The Off-Screen welcomes experimental scholarship and provocative approaches to the intersection between critical thinking,  writing, and image-making. 

We hope presenters and attendees will participate in person; however, virtual attendance options  will also be made available. 

Please submit paper proposals (300–500 words), including 3-5 bibliographical sources and a brief  biography, by December 20, 2022 to jchrietzberg1@gsu.edu; be sure to include in the title of the  email “GSU - The Off-Screen.”  

All other queries should be directed to jchrietzberg1@gsu.edu or conference organizers Ahmet  Yuce, Seth Adam Wilder, Alper Gobel, Sara Ghazi Asadollahi, Navid Darvishzadeh, Corey  Crouch, and/or Jordan Chrietzberg at Georgia State University.