Dear WFHTN members,

In the run up to the Doing Women’s Film and Television History IV proposal deadline – Monday, November 13th (10pm GMT) - I am sharing a biography of our keynote speakers each day this week. The CFP for the conference is below.

Prof Jane Gaines is the award-winning author of two books: Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice and the Law and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era, both of which received the Katherine Singer Kovacs prize from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She received an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholarly Award for her forthcoming book on early cinema, Historical Fictioning: Women Film Pioneers and for work on the Women Film Pioneers digital archive published by Columbia University Libraries in 2013. She has written articles on intellectual property and piracies, documentary theory and radicalism, feminism and film, early cinema, fashion and film, and critical race theory that have appeared in Cinema Journal, Screen, Cultural Studies, Framework, Camera Obscura, and Women and Performance. Most recently, she has been engaged in a critique of the “historical turn” in film and media studies.


*CFP

Doing Women's Film and Television History IV: Calling the Shots – Then, Now, and Next

May 23 – 25, 2018

University of Southampton, UK
Organising team: Shelley Cobb, Linda Ruth Williams, and Natalie Wreyford

The focus for DWFTH-IV is predicated on the idea of the contemporary as an historical formation. The conference will offer a space to think about the interconnectedness of the past, present and future in feminist historiography and theory, as well as across all forms of women’s film culture and film and television production. It will also consider women’s film and television histories and their relationships with the contemporary, framed and read historically, to reflect on our methodological, theoretical, ideological and disciplinary choices when researching and studying women and/in film and television. In addition to this theme, we are interested in proposals/panels on all topics related to women’s film and television history, from all eras and from all parts of the globe.

The following is an indicative (and by no means exhaustive) list of possible topics:

  *   history formulated as in medias res: how do we do contemporary history, and what are the implications of thinking of the historical in this way?

  *   the impact of social, economic and industrial conditions on women’s roles and creative practices

  *   new ways of doing textual analysis of women’s films (rethinking feminist theory?)

  *   re-thinking women as ‘auteurs’ of film and television (directors, showrunners, producers, actors)

  *   international and transnational contexts: connections, comparisons, collaborations, migration

  *   crossing industry boundaries: film, television, theatre, radio, journalism, art, etc

  *   practice-based research: directing, screenwriting, sound/set/costume design, etc

  *   women audiences/viewers and women as fans

  *   women campaigner/activists in film and television and for on-screen/off-screen change

  *   women’s film criticism/women film critics

  *   women’s independent filmmaking and/versus women’s mainstream (or blockbuster) directing

  *   changing the curriculum: critical canons, pedagogies core modules/classes

  *   the relationship between film and television genres

  *   women practitioners’ negotiations of femininity and/or feminism in their working lives

  *   the intersection of class, race, sexuality, disability and women both on screen and behind the camera

  *   issues of archiving and preservation and distribution and exhibition and broadcasting

Proposals for twenty-minute presentations must include the title of the presentation, a 250-word abstract and a brief biography the author(s). Pre-constituted panels of three speakers may also be submitted, and should include a 250-word panel rationale statement, as well as individual abstracts. Proposals should be submitted to [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]> before 3 November 2017. Participants will receive a response from the selection committee before 20 December 2017.

Hosted by:
Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK, 2000-2015: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/cswf/ and Women’s Film and Television History Network - UK/Ireland: https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com<https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/>


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Dr Shelley Cobb
Associate Professor of Film
University of Southampton
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/film/about/staff/sc1p07.page

Principle Investigator of AHRC-funded Calling the Shots: women and contemporary film culture in the UK
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/cswf/index.page

Author: Adaptation, Authorship, and Contemporary Women Filmmakers
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230283848

Co-editor: First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics
http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/first-comes-love-9781628921205/