International Society for Philosophy in Film (ISPiF)

Call for Abstracts

Third Annual Meeting

August 29th-31st, 2024

London, England 

Mission Statement:

The International Society for Philosophy in Film (ISPiF) promotes philosophicalengagement with film by conceiving film as a form or expression of thought. Rather than a mere source of entertainment or collection of objects for aesthetic scrutiny, film expresses ideas and arguments worth engaging. From the perspective of ISPiF, to engage films philosophically means to think through, along with, and/or against films, to make sense of them, to learn from them, and to further expand the practice, study, and teaching of philosophy into new regions through thoughtful engagement with film.

Theme: Frontiers and Borders in Philosophy and Film

Abstract Deadline: May 1, 2024

“Look at it. It was once a wilderness. Now it’s a garden. Aren’t you proud?”
- Hallie (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)

“Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A
border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and
undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a
constant state of transition.”
-Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands

Horace Greeley is often credited with the phrase, “Go West, young man. Go West and grow up with the country.” It is a phrase that has echoed throughout Hollywood cinema for more than a century - an industry that not only has grown up with the country, but has played an outsized role in what this nation has become. The meaning of ‘America’ resonates within an imaginary space in no small part formulated by Hollywood and its ever-evolving vision of the frontier. As America grew up, its youthful (if not naive) faith in endless expansion and growth came to confront the limits, burdens, and violence  inherent to such a project - and Hollywood was there to reflect and refract these struggles, refurbishing the American mythos in the process. Today, it seems impossible to imagine a frontier without at the same time considering the hidden boundaries that contain and betray this space, providing the contours of a distinctively American project. And though Hollywood never lost its youthful optimism, it is at the margins where frontier and borders meet where cinema, American and otherwise, has most pushed, contested, unsettled and most importantly, broadened our sense of what is possible.

In Hollywood and beyond, cinema has also and immeasurably shaped ideals  surrounding personal identity. From its inception cinema has shown us who we are  meant to be, and how we are meant to look and work and live and love and die. At the  same time, it has struggled to contend with or sought to evade those transgressive and  border identities that do not fit the ideals depicted on the silver screen (or captured in  the bigoted subtext of studio morality clauses). Through this tension between cinematic  ideal and complex reality, filmmaking has both resisted and enabled– sometimes  through its very resistance– the construction of ‘other,’ ‘border’, and ‘queer’ identities.

As we fall into the strange new world of the twenty-first century, cinema can help us to  navigate the shifting, even dissolving geographical and metaphysical borders that shape  our identities. As the climate crisis creates new conflicts while exacerbating existing  ones, humanity bleeds across geographical borders. Our communities and nations are  rapidly changing, in ways that ‘threaten’ well-established national identities while  renewing the promise of a robust shared sense of membership within the human ethical  community. What can film teach us about existence in these new borderlands or this  emerging shared world? What new, more open notions of identity should film conjure  for us as we learn to reshape our own in response to a rapidly changing world?

ISPiF invites abstracts that address these (and other) questions concerning  borders and frontiers in the philosophy of film: 

“Border” Identities: To be and not to be; ambiguous personal identities; ambiguous belonging; the  border of life and death; non-binary beings and modes of existence 

Liminal Spaces: Borderlands; spaces between; existence on the margins; indefinite, emerging and  dissolving borders  

The Human and the Other-than-Human: Human/animal relations; human/AI relations;  defining/upsetting the limits of the human  

Inside-Out: Breaking down the walls that separate us; incarceration 

Transgression of boundaries: Rebellion; revolution; escape from confinement; resistance 

Immigration and Migration: Challenges to citizenship; journeys to new lands; hope, despair and the  promised land; visions of the homeland 

The Frontier Myth: The Western, American expansionism, the ‘final frontier’ and science fiction;  shifting landscapes of the frontier; the gunslinger and individualism

New Frontiers: New developments in technology; the emergence of artificial intelligence; imagining  new futures and landscapes; space exploration 

Colonization and Colonialism: Portraits of Indigeneity; settler myths; constructions of otherness;  American founding myths 

Closing of the Frontier: The ‘anti-Western’ Western; the inescapable city; unimaginable futures;  apocalyptic nightmares 

Geographical Borders: The War film and national identity; gangster films and portraits of  immigration; cosmopolitanism 

Violence and Borders: Tribalism; Patriotism; xenophobia;  

Temporal Boundaries: Relations between past, present and future; experiences of temporality

Submission Guidelines and Instructions: 

Extended abstracts should be 500-750 words, with standard font and margins. 

Deadline: The deadline for receipt of abstracts is May 1, 2024. Any submission received  after midnight Pacific time on this date will not be considered. Notification of acceptance  will be provided mid-May. 

If accepted, final papers, no longer than 15 pages, double spaced, must be provided by  July 15th in order to be distributed to all participants in advance of the symposium. This  is crucial to the format and success of the symposium, where authors will be provided  only 10-12 minutes to summarize, emphasize, or further develop the contents of the full  essay. This condensed presentation time, combined with all participants reading each  accepted paper and viewing relevant films in advance, is intended to allow substantial  time for questions and discussion following each presentation. 

Please send all submissions as either a Word or PDF attachment to:  ispifconference@gmail.com