italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies Call for Papers

Re-envisioning the Child: New Perspectives on Children and Childhoods
in Italian Film from Early Cinema to the Present

14-15 July 2008 at the University of Exeter, Devon, UK

Keynote speakers: Aine O'Healy (Loyola Marymount University), Jaimey
Fisher (University of California, Davis), Robert Gordon (Gonville &
Caius College, Cambridge), Paul Sutton (Roehampton), Emma Wilson (Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge), Mary Wood (Birkbeck College)

Memorable representations of children and childhoods within a variety
of genres and across historical epochs are widely recognised as a staple
feature of the Italian cinematic canon. However, whilst the recurrent
presence of the filmic child has been acknowledged within traditional
film historiography, its changing role and status has, until recently,
suffered from a peculiar critical neglect. In recent years the
path-breaking work of scholars working both within the sphere of Italian
studies, and the burgeoning discipline of childhood studies, has highlighted
the need to re-evaluate representations of children and childhoods on
film, in light of other socio-historical and cultural phenomena. In
response to new scholarly interest in a critical blind-spot within Italian
film criticism and historiography, this conference will create a space
in which specialists from a genuinely interdisciplinary background can
contribute to a re-envisioning of the filmic child. The conference !
aims to filter representations of children and childhood through a
variety of critical lenses and acknowledge the impact of national and
global trends on their representation.

We particularly welcome proposals which engage with the following
topics:

Representations of children in early cinema
The child in historical drama/costume drama
The role of the child in Italian film criticism
Child actors
The politicisation of children and childhoods
Violence and the traumatised child
Childhood and innocence
The lost, endangered or missing child
The resurfacing of lost childhoods/the ghosts of childhood
The child and questions of gender and sexuality
Childhood and genre
Childhood under postmodernity and the ‘death of childhood’
Re-reading the child in Neorealism
The child in global cinema
Childhood and immigration

All enquiries or abstracts (300-500) words should be addressed either
to Danielle Hipkins or Roger Pitt via email at [log in to unmask]&YY=50233&y5beta=yes&order=&sort=&pos=0">[log in to unmask]
no later than 1st February 2008.

Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes in duration.

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