Call for Papers
TRANSMISSION: CINEMA / PSYCHOANALYSIS
International Interdisciplinary Conference
University of Cambridge, 17-18 September 2008
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Kaja Silverman (University of California, Berkeley) TBC
Professor Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam)
The University of Cambridge’s Psychoanalysis Reading Group, in co-operation
with the Centre for Research into the Arts, Humanities and Social Studies
(CRASSH), invites proposals for papers to be given at a two-day
international interdisciplinary conference, to be held on 17-18 September
2008. This conference aims specifically to bring together academics and
graduate students with artists and film practitioners from a range of
disciplinary backgrounds. This event will form part of the 2008 Cambridge
Film Festival and film screenings will form an integral part of the
conference programme.
Cinema and psychoanalysis have often been thought to share ‘parallel’
histories that are characterised by processes of mutual transmission, from
the transferral of psychoanalytic scenarios into the cinematic frame to the
translation of psychoanalytic concepts into film theory. To some extent
transfixed by each other’s representational and interpretive practices, both
psychoanalysis and cinema have witnessed, mirrored and, in some cases,
elicited reciprocal transformations. In recent years, however, these
transactions have come to be criticised as acts of contamination and
corruption, so that transmission has been recast in negative terms as
transgression or transfiguration. But is the transplantation of
psychoanalytic discourse into film and film theory really defunct, and is
that capacity for mutual transformation absolutely lost? What, then, are the
possibilities and conditions of transmission across, between or beyond
cinema and psychoanalysis? What are the histories of that transference and
what might its future trajectories be? Can cinema – to transform a Deleuzian
concept – be understood as a psychoanalytic mode of thought?
Proposals are invited for papers of no more than 20 minutes, which respond
in any way to these questions. The organisers would also be particularly
interested in proposals to screen short films, accompanied by a brief talk.
Film and talk should, taken together, not exceed 20 minutes in length.
Please submit an abstract of maximum 300 words and please include either an
academic CV or a brief summary of relevant biographical information. In the
case of film submissions, please indicate how the film relates to the
conference theme.
Please submit proposals by email, no later than 29 February 2008, to:
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