Currently viewing the category: "News"

2023 Student Essay Award

The Domitor Student Essay Award is an annual competition designed to stimulate interest in the field of early cinema studies, to involve young scholars and archivists in the activities of our organization, and to reduce the gap between established and emerging generations of scholars and archivists of early cinema. It is crucial for the future of early cinema studies that young historians, theorists, and archivists present their work and enter into discussion with current scholars and scholarship.

Although we imagine the general time frame for the period covered by the essays to be the late 1880s to 1915, we realize that cinema developed unevenly across the global stage. For that reason, submissions treating cinema after 1915 in countries where early cinema practices postdate the proposed time frame will be given full consideration. Similarly, essays that examine the history and/or current status of early cinema’s place in historiography, theory, or the archive are also welcomed.

Submissions may be written in either French or English and should not exceed 7,000 words. All entrants must be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at the time of submission, or have received a degree no earlier than January 2023. Essays prepared by students to fulfill course requirements may be submitted. An essay will not be accepted, however, if it has been previously published or issued in any form of general distribution. Each student may enter only one essay. All submissions are due electronically (as a PDF or Microsoft Word document) by 18 September 2023.

The winner of the award will be announced during the 2023 edition of the Pordenone Giornate del cinema muto festival in October. The award consists of a monetary prize (USD 500) and assistance in obtaining publication of the winning essay in a professional film historical journal. Please send your submission to the Domitor Student Essay Committee: domitorinc@gmail.com.

Prix de l’Essai étudiant Domitor 2023

Le Prix de l’Essai étudiant Domitor est un concours annuel destiné à stimuler la recherche sur le cinéma des premiers temps, de même qu’à réduire le fossé qui sépare les chercheurs établis de la relève en incitant les jeunes chercheurs et archivistes à prendre part aux activités de notre association. Il est primordial pour l’avenir de la recherche sur le cinéma des premiers temps que les jeunes historiens, théoriciens et archivistes présentent leurs travaux et puissent entamer un dialogue avec les spécialistes de la discipline.

Si nous pensons que la période couverte par le cinéma des premiers temps s’étend globalement de la fin des années 1880 à 1915, nous réalisons que le cinéma s’est développé de manière inégale sur la scène mondiale. C’est pourquoi nous prendrons en considération les propositions concernant des pays et territoires où les pratiques du cinéma des premiers temps sont restées d’actualité au-delà de 1915. De la même façon, nous examinerons avec intérêt les propositions concernant l’histoire ou le statut actuel du cinéma des premiers temps dans l’historiographie, les textes théoriques ou les archives.

Les textes peuvent être rédigés en anglais ou en français et ne doivent pas dépasser 7 000 mots. Les participants doivent être inscrits dans un programme d’études supérieures au moment de leur soumission ou bien avoir reçu leur diplôme au plus tôt en janvier 2023. Il est possible de présenter un texte rédigé dans le cadre d’un cours. Néanmoins, le participant garantit à l’association qu’il est l’auteur du texte présenté et que celui-ci n’a pas été publié ou n’est pas en voie en de publication. Un seul texte est admis par participant. Les textes doivent être envoyés dans une version électronique (format pdf ou MS Word) avant le 18 septembre 2023.

L’essai gagnant sera annoncé en octobre 2023 pendant le festival Giornate del cinema muto de Pordenone. La personne dont l’essai aura été choisi recevra 500 USD et le soutien de Domitor avec la publication de son essai dans une revue scientifique dédiée à l’histoire du cinéma.

Merci d’envoyer vos essais au comité du prix étudiant Domitor : domitorinc@gmail.com.

 
Call for Papers for conference on:
ISLANDS AND AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA
University of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn – June 17-19 2024
Held in collaboration with SICRI (the Small Island Cultures Research Initiative) and Shima journal

Focus:

Islands have been extensively represented in cinema, television and various forms of video. Local community film and video productions and documentaries by outside producers have often looked at the minutiae of island life and the nuances of living on islands. There is also the expedition genre, representing journeys to islands (with the outsider’s impressions as the key topic). YouTube has many examples of personal travel videos. Many fictional and documentary productions have utilised familiar tropes of island paradises and their opposite, island ‘hells’ – places of confinement, menace and despair. Island paradises have been the subject of comedy and romance whereas hellish islands have been featured in genres such as horror, action and SciFi. Reality television has also drawn on these paradigms and a number of music videos have also represented islands in various ways.

Proposals:

Proposals from researchers from any Humanities field are invited that address one or more of the following topics:

  • The representation of actual islands in one or multiple audiovisual texts
  • The representation of fictional islands in one or multiple audiovisual texts
  • The representation of islands in particular genres and/or national cinemas
  • The relationship of island-themed audiovisual productions to broader social political factors and histories
  • Gender issues in island themed audiovisual productions
  • Colonial and postcolonial discourses in island-themed audiovisual productions
  • Island community media productions and/or organisations
  • Ethnographic approaches to island themed audiovisual productions
  • Reconstructions of historical island life in audiovisual productions
  • Issues of film/video style with regard to representations of islands

Proposals (300-400 words long) should be sent to Dr Firouz Gaini FirouzG@setur.fo and Dr Philip Hayward prhshima@gmail.com

An early acceptance program is in place, for those wishing to apply for travel funding. All proposals received by August 20th 2023 will be considered and replied to by September 21st 2023. Final deadline for submissions of proposals will be January 30th 2024.

NB cheaper accommodation in Torshavn tends to book out early, so the earliest possible submission of proposals is advised.

There will be a special issue of Shima on the topic of Islands and Audiovisual media published in late 2024. Conference delegates are invited to submit extended versions of their accepted papers for consideration for publication by August 1st (absolute latest) and may submit these prior to the conference for online publication in advance of the special issue (at the editor’s discretion) – contact Dr Philip Hayward at prhshima@gmail.com for further information.

 

CFP: Global Bond Girls – The Impact of a Complex Cultural Icon

Edited by: Lisa Funnell and Monica Germanà

As one of the world’s most popular cultural icons, James Bond has captured the imagination of viewers around the world with his licence to kill, death-defying missions, innovative gadgets, tricked out cars, impeccable style, and refined tastes (see Funnell and Dodds 2023). Arguably, the popular appeal of James Bond has been most strongly shaped by his encounters with women – heroic and villainous alike – who have helped to define the heroic identity and libidinal masculinity of the titular figure. Across 60 years, the cinematic “Bond Girl” has become a popular culture icon in her own right and a figure synonymous with femininity in spy culture.

The term “Bond Girl” has been widely used by scholars, critics, and fans in reference to nearly every woman that Bond encounters in the course of his mission, occasionally including Miss Moneypenny and even M. This umbrella term yokes together a range of women who serve a variety of narrative purposes as protagonists and antagonists, primary characters and secondary figures, women with names and those who remain anonymous, women who are fully visualized and those who appear in fragments in the opening credits. While the term would appear to pigeon-hole a varied range of characters, the recent critical success of Michelle Yeoh who starred in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) has, on the other hand, raised questions on the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in leading roles across many films including James Bond. As a result, the term Bond Girl encapsulates a complex series of representational practices, the confluence of which has often resulted in sweeping generalizations about the depiction of women in the franchise and unnuanced readings of gender throughout the film franchise.

Indeed, there is, arguably, no more loaded term in the Bond canon, and its critical reception, than “Bond Girl”. The term has recently been critiqued for infantilizing professional women by juxtaposing their “girlhood” with Bond’s “manhood” and thereby reducing their narrative importance and psychological complexity. Furthermore, the term would appear to essentialize women because of their implied dependence on and belonging to Bond (as his girls) without standalone identities of their own. Recently, some of the actors including Monica Bellucci, who, at 51 was the oldest woman to have played the role of one Bond’s “love” interests in Spectre (2015), have refused to be identified by the term, which was, reportedly banned on the set of No Time To Die (2021).

On the other hand, other actors have ‘capitalised’ on and even promoted the status of “Bond Girls”. Maryam D’Abo, who played the role of Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights (1987), co-wrote with John Cork Bond Girls Are Forever (2003), an illustrated book which followed up a documentary with the same title, (2002 and 2006); interviewed by D’Abo for the documentary, Rosamund Pike, who played Bond Girl-villain Miranda Frost in Die Another Day (2002), claims that “Bond Girl” is “more fun” and preferable, in its playfulness, to “Bond Woman” (D’Abo [2002] 2006). Naomie Harris, who has taken the role of Eve Moneypenny since Skyfall (2012), whilst aware of the clichés the “Bond Girl” tag comes with, has shown no critical resistance to the term per se, and but has acknowledged the roles are “not really stereotypes anymore, they can be anything” (qtd. in Rothman 2012). While the “Bond-Girl brand” runs the risk of perpetuating some of the problematic gender issues the Bond narratives bring to the forefront, the emergence of more complex roles in the most recent films, and the critical re-reassessment of the earlier films, has also led some critics to reclaim the term in feminist readings of the Bond canon (Germanà 2019).

In light of these challenges or even in spite of them, the Bond Girl has been highly influential in defining femininity in spy culture and other cultural texts. This influence extends beyond the medium of film to include a range of cultural products as well as regions. Indeed, alongside the heated debates she has engendered, the “Bond Girl” has, arguably, also helped to shape cultural representations, performances, and definitions of femininity around the globe. As the rich diversity of these responses remains largely unexplored, our collection, Global Bond Girls, seeks to investigate the expansive nature and global impact of this complex cultural icon.

In particular, the collection centers on three overarching questions:

1 – Representation – How are women depicted across official texts in the franchise including Ian Fleming’s novels, the James Bond films, and licensed comic books, among others?

2 – Rearticulation – How are facets of the Bond Girl archetype transposed onto other cinematic women through the casting of their actors in subsequent roles?

3 – Reinvention – How has the Bond Girl been (re)imagined and transplanted into different cultural texts worldwide and to what end?

We are currently seeking essays for our multidisciplinary collection Global Bond Girls that expand upon the current body of scholarly and critical works. Additionally, we are interested in including a variety of scholarly and critical voices from around the world to be featured in this multimodal research collection.

We encourage proposals on a range of topics that include but are not limited to:

  • intersectional representation of Bond Girls in licensed texts: novels, films, comics
  • race politics and Bond Girls
  • ‘foreign’ actors and ‘exotic’ femininity
  • censorship and Bond Girls
  • reception of Bond girls in non-anglophone countries
  • other films starring an actor after she played a Bond Girl
  • influence on spy culture è films, television, literature, comics
  • depiction of “Bond Girl” inspired women in animation, comics, anime, manga
  • products aimed at children
  • spoofs and parodies
  • advertising and the marketing of consumer products

Please submit a 250 word abstract along with a CV to globalbondgirls@gmail.com by September 1, 2023. Please direct any questions or inquiries to this email as well.

 

As is tradition, we will be holding a book launch event for anyone who has published a book in the last year. This year, the book launch event will take place May 27th, from 5:00pm–9:00pm.

If you would like to present your new book at this year’s event, please fill out the following form before May 16th, 2023:

FMSAC Book Launch

—–

Cher.ère.s collègues,

Comme le veut la tradition, nous organisons un lancement de livres pour quiconque aurait publié un livre au cours de la dernière année. Cette année, le lancement de livres aura lieu le 27 mai, de 17h00 à 21h00.

Si vous souhaitez présenter votre nouveau livre lors du lancement cette année, veuillez s’il vous plaît remplir le formulaire suivant avant le 16 mai 2023 :

ACÉCM Lancement de Livres

 

Grad Student FMSAC Congress Travel Reimbursement

To be eligible for a partial refund of your travel costs, you must attend (and sign in at) the FMSAC AGM.

This form is due to the FMSAC treasurer, along with travel receipts, by June 30 of the year of the conference.

——


Remboursement des frais de voyage pour les étudiant.e.s de 2e et 3e cycle participant.e.s au colloque de l’ACÉCM

Afin de recevoir un remboursement partiel pour vos frais de voyage, vous devez participer (et signer la feuille de présence) à l’AGA de l’ACÉCM.

Il faut envoyer ce formulaire et les reçus de voyage au/à la trésorier(ière) de l’ACÉCM après le colloque, mais avant le 30 juin.

FMSAC-Grad-Student-Congress-Travel-Reimbursement-Form.docx

 

Position Details

Position Information

Position Title Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Cinema & Media Studies (50%)
Posting Number F488P
Type of position Limited Term
Department/Unit Fountain School of Performing Arts
Location Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
About the opportunity
The Fountain School of Performing Arts (FSPA) at Dalhousie University invites applications for a ten-month (50% FTE) limited-term appointment in Cinema & Media Studies, at the rank of Lecturer/Assistant Professor, commencing August 1, 2023. The position is subject to budgetary approval.

The successful candidate’s may duties include but are not limited to teaching three undergraduate classes; the candidate will also be expected to contribute to administrative service within the Fountain School of Performing Arts. The classes will mostly likely be in the Fall semester (September to December), although it might be possible to spread teaching out over the full academic year (September to April) at the candidate’s request. The successful candidate will have the option of working remotely for some of the time, although in-person presence at Dalhousie University is strongly preferred for at least one teaching semester.

Applicants must have or be near completion of a PhD in Cinema and Media Studies or a related field; a completed PhD is preferred. They must also have an active research profile and evidence of effective teaching at the post-secondary level.

Applications will include a curriculum vitae, a statement of research and teaching interests and philosophies, evidence of teaching effectiveness (formal course evaluations), and the contact information for three referees (applicants selected for further consideration will be notified before referees are contacted). While most courses have been scheduled for next year, there is some flexibility around the specific classes the successful applicant will teach; therefore, please include in you application a cover letter that indicates the topic you would choose for a 4th-year Special Topics in Cinema and Media Studies course. Please also indicate which of the following courses you would feel comfortable teaching, and of these, which two you would be most interested in teaching: Animated Film; Film History Since 1955; Indigenous Representation in Film; Popular Cinema; Studies in Film Directors; and Topics in Black and African Diaspora Cinemas. Please also include a statement describing a demonstrated commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility within your cover letter. Applications are to be submitted online here.

The deadline for applications is May 22, 2023.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Dalhousie University commits to achieving inclusive excellence through continually championing equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. The university encourages applications from Indigenous persons (especially Mi’kmaq), persons of Black/African descent (especially African Nova Scotians), and members of other racialized groups, persons with disabilities, women, and persons identifying as members of 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and all candidates who would contribute to the diversity of our community. For more information, please visit www.dal.ca/hiringfordiversity.

Posting Detail Information

Open Date 02/12/2020
Close Date 05/22/2023
Open Until Filled No
Quick Link for Direct Access to Posting

Documents Needed to Apply

Required Documents

  1. Résumé / Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  2. Cover Letter
  3. Teaching Statement
  4. Research Statement
  5. List of referees
  6. EDIA Statement

Optional Documents

 

Job Title: New Media Assistant Professor (Digital Culture)
Rank: Assistant Professor
Tenure Information: Tenure Track

About the University
Work where the world comes to create, discover and learn.
We are one of Canada’s top universities and leading research institutions. With more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students, two campuses (Lethbridge and Calgary), seven faculties and schools, and more than 2,500 employees, ULethbridge is Lethbridge’s second largest employer. Faculty and staff come together to contribute, each in their own way, to establishing ULethbridge as Canada’s destination university. In 2022, Lethbridge was recognized as one of Canada’s top small cities.

Oki, and welcome to the University of Lethbridge. Our University’s Blackfoot name is Iniskim, meaning Sacred Buffalo Stone. The University is located in traditional Blackfoot Confederacy territory. We honour the Blackfoot people and their traditional ways of knowing in caring for this land, as well as all Aboriginal peoples who have helped shape and continue to strengthen our University community.

About the Position:
The Department of New Media, Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lethbridge invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track appointment in Digital Culture, at the rank of Assistant Professor commencing July 1, 2023, subject to budgetary and Board approval. Joining a dynamic team of artists and scholars, the successful candidate will build on existing strengths in New Media by contributing to the decolonization of curriculum through the lens of digital culture studies.

Qualifications and Responsibilities:
Qualified candidates will have a PhD in Digital Culture or cognate area. Ideally, the candidate’s research trajectory will intersect with issues of reconciliation, decolonization, equity, accessibility. Applicants will be well-versed in the historical contingencies and contemporary complexities of social and cultural phenomena surrounding current and emergent digital technologies (for example: social media, Artificial Intelligence, cryptocurrency, data collection and data-driven decision making, the attention economy) and their ramifications on cultures, the environment, economies, politics, art and design, and everyday life. While not a prerequisite, we are particularly interested in applicants who have a parallel creative practice. Evidence of successful teaching at the post-secondary level is preferred, though not essential.

The successful candidate will teach introductory and advanced level courses, as well as develop future course offerings, in Digital Culture studies to students in New Media programs, as well as to students from other disciplines fulfilling the Liberal Education requirements of their degrees. Teaching responsibilities will be determined to align with the candidate’s areas of research expertise. The new faculty member will join a vibrant department which delivers a broad new media curriculum to students from diverse backgrounds. They will also contribute to graduate programs, student supervision, and mentorship.

In addition to teaching, the successful candidate will conduct research/creative work in their areas of expertise. Faculty are responsible for teaching, research, and service and play an integral role in the current and future curricular direction of programs. They are expected to participate in collegial governance at the department, faculty, and university levels and to actively engage with broader communities.

About the Academic Unit:
The Department of New Media offers a New Media major degree (BFA), combined BFA degrees in New Media / Education, New Media / Computer Science, and New Media / Management, as well as Minors in New Media, and New Media Studies.

A generalist program, New Media emphasizes experiential learning, technical and creative innovation, critical thought, cross-disciplinarity, and collaboration. Supported by three computer labs equipped with high-end work stations, three specialized video editing and finishing facilities, as well as the Cove Studio (contains a green screen cyclorama, photographic backdrops, and specialized lighting), the department offers core studio and studies courses in a range of areas including, new media history and theory, web design, programming, game design and development, interaction, animation, and video production, as well as a rotating selection of upper-level electives.

The Faculty of Fine Arts includes two Canada Research Chairs in Indigenous fields of study (one in Art and one in Music) and supports collaborative, community-oriented scholarship.

About the University:
The University of Lethbridge, a comprehensive university with approximately 8,000 students from 37 countries, aims to support the spirit of free inquiry and the critical interpretation of ideas. Our University’s work also focuses on fostering an inclusive, equitable, and diverse campus grounded in the principles of truth and reconciliation. Many world-class researchers, visual, sound, and performing artists have made their home here, contributing to a thriving arts community supported by numerous galleries, including the SAAG (Southern Alberta Art Galley Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin), CASA Community Arts Centre, the Trianon Gallery, the University’s Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess Gallery, as well as theatre and music venues. The University is a vital part of Lethbridge, a community of over 100,000 people, located near the Oldman River, close to the Rocky Mountains, and within easy driving distance to Calgary’s International Airport. The many recreational and cultural amenities of the Lethbridge area offer a wonderful quality of life, reflected in its 2022 recognition as one of Canada’s best small cities.

Application Instructions:
Applications must be submitted through the ULethbridge Careers webpage. Applications should contain the following documents, each uploaded as a single PDF file:

  • Letter of Interest/Intent
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Statement of Research/Creative Practice
  • Portfolio of Research/Creative Practice. If applicable: 20 images, links to video/audio files and professional websites if relevant, description of works for context
  • Statement of Teaching Philosophy
  • Portfolio of Teaching: two sample syllabi including assignments, documentation of student work, student evaluations, if available

You will also be required to provide contact information for three references. References will be contacted directly, with information on how to submit their reference letters. The application submission triggers this request to your references, so please ensure that they are prepared to submit their letters no later than May 19, 2023.

All application materials may be addressed to:

Dr. Shelley Scott, PhD
Interim Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts
University of Lethbridge
4401 University Drive W, Lethbridge, AB, T1K 3M4

Faculty: Faculty of Fine Arts
Campus: Lethbridge
Open Date: 03/04/2023
Close Date: 05/12/2023
Open Until Filled
Desired Start Date: 07/01/2023
Position End Date (if temporary)

Special Instructions to Applicants
The University acknowledges the potential impact that career interruptions can have on a candidate’s record of achievement. We encourage applicants to explain in their application the impact that career interruptions have had on their record.

The University of Lethbridge invites applications from all qualified candidates; however, in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given preference.

Employment Equity
The University of Lethbridge is committed to providing an inclusive and barrier-free work environment, including through all aspects of the hiring process. If you require support during the hiring process, please contact Human Resources at human.resources@uleth.ca so that accommodations can be put in place to support you. All private information received in relation to your request for support will be kept confidential, only information required to facilitate the accommodation will be shared with the selection committee.

Required Documents

  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Statement of Teaching Philosophy
  • Statement of Research/Creative Practice
  • Portfolio of Research/Creative Practice
  • Letter of Intent

Optional Documents

  • Additional Documents
  • Portfolio of Teaching
 

Call for Book Chapters: Cinematic Ecosystems: Screen Encounters with More-than-Human Worlds

Editors Mary Hegedus and Jessica Mulvogue invite book chapter proposals for a scholarly collection entitled Cinematic Ecosystems: Screen Encounters with More-than-human Worlds, to be published by Vernon Press.

The current global eco-emergency demands a rethinking and reimagining of environments and human beings’ relationship to and within more-than-human worlds. The subject of the nonhuman has been central to scholarship in the field of ecocinema studies. Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway’s Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human (2013), Elena Past’s Italian Ecocinema: Beyond the Human (2019), Cajetan Iheka’s African Ecomedia (2021), James Cahill’s Zoological Surrealism: The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé (2019), Jennifer Fay’s Inhospitable World: Cinema in the time of the Anthropocene (2018), and Hunter Vaughan’s Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (2019) are just a few examples of work that approaches cinema from an ecological perspective to consider how cinema expresses the “interconnectedness of human and other life forms [and] our implication in and filtering through material networks that enable and bind us” (Pick and Narraway 2013: 5).

This book builds on such scholarship but aims to home in on the concept of the ecosystem as a specific, situated biological system – involving interactions between soil, atmosphere, water and living organisms – that is crucial to understanding and coping in the era of ecological catastrophe. Studies of mycological interrelationships, interspecies kinship, and plant sentience (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 2015; Donna Haraway 2006 & 2017; Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers 2012) as well as ecocritiques of cinema itself (Sean Cubitt 2020) reveal the politico-ethical need to recognize the wide and varied scope of interspecies connectivities. Cinema, as a time-based medium, has both a distinctive ability to reveal the world and an imaginative, experimental capacity to create new worlds. Our affective relations with the aesthetic perceptual ecology of screen images (Adrian Ivakhiv 2013) helps evolve and deepen our understanding of worlds rich in connection and possibility. Furthermore our affiliations with these projected ecosystems shape our reality and influence our positions as humans in a more-than-human world (Nicole Seymour 2018).

We aim to bring together explorations of ecosystems across cinema and media genres. Cinematic ecosystems may appear as background in narrative fiction (eg. the Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest in Patricia Rozema’s Into the Forest (2015)); as the central subject of a documentary (eg. Sable Island in Jacqueline Mills’ Geographies of Solitude, 2022); or be the study of a scientific film. They may also be imaginative and speculative, such as the biological interactions in Momoko Seto’s Planet series (2008-17) or speculative futures in Danis Goulet’s Night Raiders (2020).

Cinema, as a material process and object, is also implicated in these ecologies. As such, the collection recognizes the material relationships between cinematic processes and more-than-humans on screen and beyond. We are thus also interested in both case studies of cinematic interference with ecosystems and the ways in which filmmakers and artists work with and alongside biological matter, for instance, in hand-processed or plant processed experimental cinema.

The question of knowing – as both rational thought and sensory perception – is central to our inquiry: we aim to explore what ecosystems on screen – real or imagined – may teach us about interrelations with a more-than-human world, about kinship and care, as well as about competition and conflict (as Lorraine Code argues ecosystems are as cruel as they are kind (2006)). To recognize the extent of interrelationships in the more-than-human world is to move beyond human exceptionalism towards potentially more just and sustainable modes of cohabitation with nonhumans. It is also to acknowledge that worlds exist beyond the human that are unreachable and unknowable.

Our guiding questions for this collection are: How does cinema and media work to articulate ecosystems and what are the epistemological, material, and politico-ethical implications of such articulations? And how can cinema and media aid us in coming to know more-than-human worlds and what are the limits of such inquiries?

We are interested in studies of cinematic ecosystems – ie. environments on screen: plants, animals, funga, sealife, microbial life – from a wide variety of media perspectives and issues, including, but not limited to:

  • Cli-fi; climate change media
  • Feminist and/or Indigenous epistemologies
  • BIPOC, Queer, non-binary ecologies
  • Orphaned and archival footage
  • Media technologies: Drone, micro/macro, time lapse, virtual reality, augmented reality, sound, artificial intelligence
  • Perceptual experiences of cinematic environments, perceptual ecologies
  • Media materialities
  • Interspecies kinship / matters of care / posthumanism / relational ethics
  • Scientific images: micro/macroscopic, timelapse, geological, biological, zoological, etc.
  • Environmental effects of prosperity vs precarity; sacrifice zones
  • Anthropomorphic, biomorphic and geomorphic instantiations of worlds
  • Anthropocene, Chthulucene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Planthropocene
  • Explorations of Uexkull’s Umwelt

We welcome both individual and co-authored pieces for articles of 6000 words. Please submit your 500-word proposal and a short author bio to Mary Hegedus and Jessica Mulvogue via email at mjhegedus@gmail.com and jessica.mulvogue@gmail.com Proposal Deadline June 30th 2023

Timeline:
Proposal Deadline: June 30th 2023
Acceptance/Non-acceptance notice: end of July 2023
Article submission deadline: January 15th 2024 (articles will undergo peer review)

 

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

I’ll Sleep When I’m Undead: Sleep in Contemporary Horror Media
July 2-7, 2023 in Montreal
DEADLINE March 31, 2023

CORERISC: the Collective for Research on Epistemologies of Embodied Risk, and The Sociability of Sleep seek participants for a week-long writing workshop (July 2-7, 2023) centered on sleep in 21st century horror media. We aim to explore how horror media–from films to television to social media–responds to the conditions of sleep as a site of embodied risk today.

Sleep today is said to be in crisis. Sleep is under threat by our 24/7 (Crary 2013) lifestyles; by demands of availability generated by social media, the internet and the always-on of media themselves; by the blue light of media screens, and the somatic reset of social media addictions; and by the crisis cycle of the contemporary news media. Sleep scientists are increasingly attending to longstanding inequities of access to “good sleep”, unevenly distributed across the fracture lines of social inclusion, and reflecting the environmental and cultural impact of insecure sleep conditions, including excess noise and illumination, rising temperatures under climate change, vulnerability to assault, an increasing demands to be available for work or care. These and other anxieties around sleep as a site of embodied risk are found across the spectrum of 21st century horror media.

Beyond dreams and nightmares, sleep itself has a complex history in horror media, in the remix of cinemas as a dream machine to a rich visual and aural language for altered states that blur the line between waking life and nightmare. While our focus is on 21st century media, we also seek work that puts today’s bad sleepers in dialogue with the past of sleep-horror media. Our premise is this: sleep is in essence a risky business. Sleep is often seen as generating precarious situations, and sleep itself is understood as a site of risk, vulnerability, and loss of control and agency. Sleep’s horror affects enervate the sharp edges of conventional horror, its eruptive distinctions between normal and deviant, raising complex questions of creepy agency, resistance, dispossession and vulnerability. Horror sleep media explores rest as a space of work, the site of the relentless extraction of the body’s capacities and biopolitical management, through monitoring and modulation, or in other cases the only territory in which the complexities and dangers of life today can be navigated as a new site of survival. Rather than naming a novel state of affairs, feminist, queer, and racialized sleep horror understands sleep not as a break in the fabric of reality that allows a horrific otherworldliness to emerge, but as the condition of the exhausting conditions of everyday life. Part of the horror in the contemporary wave of sleep horror media is that the waking/ dreaming binary is displaced by the grey zone of somatic capitalism, where even off-hours are occupied by apps that track, quantify and assess us while we sleep, for purposes not our own. How does 21st century media figure the dispossessive risks of sleep?

This weeklong writing workshop is a collaboration between the Sociability of Sleep interdisciplinary research-creation project and CORÉRISC as part of the series “Altered States: The Social Lives of Sleep”. We seek four to five participants for a week-long writing workshop in Montreal in the context of the Sociability of Sleep’s summer exhibition InSomnolence (June 20-July 13, 2023). Participants will arrive on Sunday. Monday through Friday will be dedicated to collaborative and individual writing sessions, working towards the publication of an edited collection. As such, we plan to work both with individual chapters, and also to collectively shape the conversation about sleep in contemporary horror. Each day will include two short public talks from participants about their emergent research in sleep horror along with writing workshops and end-of-day check-ins. In keeping with the spirit of the workshop as a generative space, the week’s events will include several activities meant to inspire discussion. The Montreal Monstrum Society will co-host a public screening of a sleep horror film; participants will be encouraged to suggest material to screen and discuss; there will be a workshop on public scholarship on popular media; and there is the possibility of creating a podcast focusing on the sleep media that we watch and discuss together.

We seek proposals from workshop participants on topics such as:

  • Sleep and Genre (horror, noir, fantastique, dark fantasy)
  • Sleep and Media (cinema, television, short-form, social media)
  • Poetics of Sleep Horror (form, tone, atmosphere, style, mode)
  • Horror studies and sleep
  • Sleep and Experimental Horror
  • Sleep Horror as/and Ecology
  • Sleep Horror and Technology
  • Sleep Horror and Creep (climate creep, deep/geological time, scale)
  • Somnolent affects: sleep and spectators
  • (Sleep) media as a source of horror and risk
  • Too much, too little: sleep out of scale
  • Earlids and Eyelids: The Bleed of Sleep
  • Sleep Horror and Crisis, Disruption, Disorder
  • Lost sleep: insomnia and other absences (as awareness, as problematic/symptom)
  • Sleep Horror and Labour
  • Retrovision: 21st century sleep horror frameworks recalling earlier media forms
  • Sleep and/in Horror Studies (concept, content, figuration)

Proposals should include:

  • a one-page description of your potential chapter: topic, approach and media (300-400 words)
  • a short bio (150 words)

We welcome submissions from emerging scholars and contingent faculty, as well as from researchers from underrepresented perspectives in horror studies. There is funding available to support the participation of scholars, prioritizing those without access to institutional support. The workshop will take place in person in Montreal. If for you, travel to Montreal is not a possibility but you wish to take part in the entire workshop, please indicate this in your application and we will find accommodation for remote participation.

Proposals can be sent to corerisc@gmail.com, with the subject line “Undead Sleep Submissions”. Deadline is March 31, 2023. “I’ll Sleep When I’m Undead” is organized by CORÉRISC members Lynn Kozak, Alanna Thain and Kristopher Woofter, in collaboration with The Sociability of Sleep and is part of “Altered States: The Social Lives of Sleep”, with support from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

 
Call for papers
International symposium
“Platforms and uses: cinema, television, video games and digital creation”
Université de Montréal – 2-3 November 2023
****voir plus bas pour la version française****

“The profusion that the Internet and digital technology have introduced into the circulation of images no longer makes it possible to choose between appropriation and sharing; on the contrary, it confuses them […]” (Chollet, 2022: 38-40).

Platforms are not empty shells, mere digital media allowing the expression of all and sundry: they reconfigure our modalities of content apprehension. In this colloquium, we propose to explore this tension between appropriation and sharing.

The first conference “Networking Images – Approches interdisciplinaires des images en réseaux” took place in 2011 at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. A little more than a decade later, we propose to revisit the subject of networked images in the light of its technical, social and academic evolutions during an international colloquium entitled “Platforms and uses: cinema, television, video games and digital creation”. This symposium, jointly organized by the University of Montreal and the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, will take place at the University of Montreal on November 2 and 3, 2023.

See the attachment for a full description of the project.

We ask you to send your proposals written in French or English to colloque.plateformes.et.usages@gmail.com by 29 April 2023. Answers will be given at the beginning of June.

Several modalities of intervention are possible:

  • An oral communication of about twenty minutes.
  • A poster.
  • Some exchanges may take place outside the conference and will take the form of radio broadcasts produced with CISM before the event.
  • The presentation of research/creative work is welcome and may be accompanied by participation in the exhibition at the Carrefour des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal that will accompany the conference.

Proposals should include the following elements:

  • Title of the proposal
  • Summary of the proposal: 1,500 characters maximum, including spaces (approximately 200 words)
  • Specifying: Name of the author(s), institution(s) to which the proposal belongs.
  • Angle in which the paper is to be presented
  • Preferred method of communication

Event organized with the support of Labo Télé, GRAFIM, CinEXmedia Partnership, CRIHN, Labex ICCA, CIM, IRMECCEN and IRCAV.
Organizing committee: Christine Bernier, Vincent Bilem, Florian Body, Marta Boni, Joyce Cimper, Barbara Laborde, Joa Neves, Guillaume Soulez, and Zaira Zarza.
Scientific committee: Laurence Allard, Dominic Arsenault, Marie-France Chambat-Houillon, Franck Rebillard, Carl Therrien.

Appel à communications
Colloque international
« Plateformes et usages : cinéma, télévision, jeu vidéo et création numérique »

« La profusion qu’Internet et le numérique ont introduite dans la circulation des images permet de ne plus choisir entre l’appropriation et le partage; au contraire, elle les confond […] » (Chollet, 2022 : 38-40).

Les plateformes ne sont pas des coquilles vides, de simples supports numériques permettant l’expression de toutes et de tous : elles reconfigurent nos modalités d’appréhension des contenus. Dans le présent colloque, nous proposons d’explorer cette tension entre appropriation et partage.

Le premier colloque « Networking Images – Approches interdisciplinaires des images en réseaux » a eu lieu en 2011 à la Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Un peu plus d’une décennie plus tard, nous proposons de revisiter le sujet des images en réseaux à la lumière de ses évolutions techniques, sociales et académiques lors d’un colloque international intitulé « Plateformes et usages : cinéma, télévision, jeu vidéo et création numérique ». Ce colloque organisé conjointement par l’Université de Montréal et l’Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle aura lieu à l’Université de Montréal les 2 et 3 novembre 2023.

Voir pièce jointe pour les détails.

Nous vous demandons d’envoyer vos propositions rédigées en français ou en anglais à l’adresse colloque.plateformes.et.usages@gmail.com pour le 29 avril 2023. Les réponses seront données au début du mois de juin.

Plusieurs modalités d’interventions sont envisageables :

  • Une communication orale d’une vingtaine de minutes.
  • Un poster.
  • Certains échanges pourront avoir lieu en dehors du colloque et prendront la forme d’émissions de radio produites avec CISM, avant l’événement.
  • La présentation de travaux en recherche/création est bienvenue et pourra s’accompagner d’une participation à l’exposition au Carrefour des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal qui accompagnera le colloque.

Les propositions devront comporter les éléments suivants :

  • Titre de la proposition
  • Résumé de la proposition : 1 500 caractères maximum, espaces compris (environ 200 mots)
  • Précisant : Nom de(s) auteur(s)/autrice(s), institution(s) de rattachement.
  • Axe dans lequel s’inscrit la communication
  • Modalité de communication préférée

Évènement organisé avec le soutien du Labo Télé, du GRAFIM, du Partenariat CinEXmedia, du CRIHN, du Labex ICCA, du CIM, de l’IRMECCEN et de l’IRCAV.
Comité organisateur : Christine Bernier, Vincent Bilem, Florian Body, Marta Boni, Joyce Cimper, Barbara Laborde, Joa Neves, Guillaume Soulez, et Zaira Zarza.
Comité scientifique : Laurence Allard, Dominic Arsenault, Marie-France Chambat-Houillon, Franck Rebillard, Carl Therrien.