Call For Papers

Preface, Prelude, Prologue

an interdisciplinary symposium

5th June 2024

Venue: Screen 2, Depot Cinema, Lewes, UK (in person)

Next to Lewes railway station at Pinwell Road, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 2JS

Please see this link for further information: https://lewesdepot.org/visit/travel

Submission deadline: 3rd March 2024 

Can you think of an opening moment in a narrative work that engages you, sparks your curiosity, and establishes the themes and politics of the whole piece?

In Cinematic Overtures: How To Read Opening Scenes, Annette Insdorf tells us “a great movie tends to provide in the first few minutes the keys by which to unlock the rest of the film” thus enabling our “sophisticated appreciation”. It might “mislead” us in some way or act as “a stylized prologue that is not really part of the action but sets a tone or introduces a theme” (2017: ix-5). Preface, Prelude, Prologue is an interdisciplinary symposium that invites participants to reflect on an expanded version of Insdorf’s notion by analysing the openings of a wide range of creative outputs: film and moving image more widely, and all kinds of artworks such as songs, poems, plays, LPs, TV shows, and novels. 

Examples might include but are not limited to:

-       Moving image: the first shot, the opening scene, the title sequence

-       Music: the first track, sentence, verse

-       Poetry: the first word, sentence

-       Theatre: opening mise-en-scène, first sound, gesture, word, sentence

-       Literature: the first paragraph, sentence, chapter.

To participate as a speaker, please submit an abstract of 250 words for a fifteen-minute paper, along with a 50 word biography, including institutional affiliation (university, college, archive, independent researcher) to the event organiser Lisa Holloway at l.holloway@sussex.ac.uk by 3rd March 2024. Submissions from postgraduate / early career researchers are welcomed.

A cinema screen will be available for presentations. N.B. Whilst this symposium is an in-person event, if you are unable to attend, e.g., due to physical disability and/or an immunocompromised condition, virtual participation will be facilitated.

Acceptance notices will be sent by the end of April.

This event is funded by University of Sussex.

Best wishes,

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Lisa Holloway

Doctoral Researcher

University of Sussex