CALL FOR PAPERS
Beginnings and Endings in Films, Film, and Film Studies
One-day conference, 13th June 2008, University of Warwick
"Men, like poets, rush 'into the middest,' in medias res, when they
are born; they also die in mediis rebus, and to make sense of their
span they need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give
meaning to lives and to poems."
– Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (1966)
The increasing prevalence of digital technologies within cinema over
the last two decades has caused some film scholars to think of the
history of film as a complete movement – a period with a beginning and
an end. Whether or not one agrees with such a conception, its very
existence testifies to the importance we place on beginnings and
endings as a means of conferring shape and significance upon subjects
of enquiry.
This one-day conference is dedicated to investigating the various
notions of 'beginning' and 'ending' encountered by film scholars in
the diverse areas with which they are engaged – in individual films,
in film as a medium, and in film studies. Whether addressing
observable beginnings or ends (e.g.: of particular films, of filmic
technologies, etc.), or those assigned retrospectively (e.g.: of
periods, of theories, etc.), speakers will be engaging with the
central question of what examining beginning and/or end-points can
profitably teach us. Over ten years since David Bordwell and Noel
Carroll's Post Theory (1996) pronounced the death of 'Grand Theory',
which accompanied the formation of film studies, this conference will
also implicitly ask what new 'beginnings' followed, should follow, or
are now following, this particular 'ending'.
This framework potentially allows for the bringing together of work
being carried out in the fields of film narrative, narration,
cognitivism, aesthetics, genre, technology, and history – among
others.
Keynote speakers will include V. F. Perkins.
Proposals are welcomed on, but certainly not limited to, the following areas:
• The rhetoric or ideology of closure or its repudiation
• Aesthetic norms or relationships established by openings
• The merits or pitfalls of periodizing
• Epistemic ramifications of beginnings or endings
• Introductions of technologies into, or disappearances from, cinema
• Openings or endings in different national cinemas/modes of production
• The decline or rise of particular aesthetic practices in digital cinema
• Changes in spectatorship caused by changes in the medium
• The rise or fall of theories/critical approaches within film studies
The deadline for proposals is 1st May.
Please send a 250-word proposal, and a brief biographical note, by
email to: [log in to unmask] All enquiries about
registration etc. should also be referred to conference organisers Tom
Hughes and James MacDowell at this address.
--
Iain Robert Smith
Institute of Film and Television
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
NG7 2RD
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