Cherchez La Femme : the Cinematic Femme Fatale, her History and
Transmissions
University of Exeter, Friday 2nd – Saturday 3rd September 2005
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Ginette Vincendeau (University of Warwick)
Professor Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds)
The femme fatale has been an enduringly popular persona in film criticism
and
in wider popular discourses outside the cinema, but she is a figure that is
very difficult to define and pin down. She has been understood as a figure
of fantasy, embodying both unreal sensuality and a profound threat to post-
war
American masculinity. In the cinema she has been understood as arising out
the French critical reception of Hollywood films noirs, but her historical
and
international roots are rather more complex: the femme has traces in
figures
such as the Victorian vamp, and across the visual arts and popular literary
fictions. Thus the femme fatale might be said to be at once a fascinating
and elusive figure, overtheorised but under- contexualised.
The School of English at the University of Exeter, in collaboration with
Italian Studies at the University of Leeds, will be holding a one and a
half
day conference on the femme fatale figure. The conference aims both to
explore, and account for, the fascination with the femme, and to restore
background to the figure by focusing on the historical, national and
cultural
contexts out of which she arises. The organisers hope to bring together
scholars from different disciplines, and papers are invited on the
following
topics and areas:
1) The historical traces of the fatal female in earlier fictions and
figures
2) Intertexts of the fatal woman in other media, such as popular fictions
or
visual arts
3) Manifestations of the fatal female figures in European (and world
cinemas)
eg. the Weimar woman in German cinema, the diva in Italian cinema; the
relationship between the femme fatale figure and national cinemas and/or
representations of national identity
4) Ways in which the transmission and reworking of the femme fatale figure
in
post-war cinemas (and neo-noirs) illuminates the femme fatale as a
trans-national figure. How does that transmission speak to the relationship
between Hollywood and European/World cinemas?
5) Concepts and debates surrounding the femme: why has the femme figure
been
so central to the development of feminist film theory? What can the
fascination with the femme tell us about our relationship to ‘problem
women’
in different media? Is the femme, as Elisabeth Bronfen argues,
a ‘catchphrase
for the dangers of sexual difference’?
Proposals of 200-300 words for papers of 15-20 minutes should be sent by
Monday 14 th February 2005, to the following email address:
[log in to unmask]
Or by mail to:
Dr Helen Hanson
School of English
University of Exeter
Queen’s Drive
Exeter
Devon, UK
EX4 4QH
Conference website:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/english/conferences/cherchez-la-femme.shtml
Conference Organisers:
Dr Helen Hanson, Lecturer in Film, School of English, University of Exeter
Dr Catherine O’Rawe, Lecturer in Italian Studies, Italian Department,
University of Leeds
Cherchez La Femme: the Cinematic Femme Fatale, her History and
Transmissions
University of Exeter
Friday 2nd - Saturday 3rd September 2005
email: [log in to unmask]
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