Hollywood and the Production Code: Criticism and History. Friday, 6th July 2018 @ King’s College London. (Symposium speaker and respondent: Professor Lea Jacobs, University of Wisconsin-Madison.) A one-day symposium devoted to the style-based investigation of the influence of the Production Code on Hollywood cinema. The symposium will take in a range of issues concerning the impact of the Code on “golden age” Hollywood filmmaking. Part of the symposium will also be devoted to a close consideration of the style of “pre-Code” filmmaking (generally understood as 1930-1934). There is currently a strong consensus, grounded in the detailed archival work of major film historians, that 30-34 was not, after all, “pre” the Code but was a period in which the Code played an important role in shaping the content of movie fictions. Yet film festivals and TV channels (TCM, for example) continue to find an audience for early-30s productions by signalling, via […]

Scholar-Activism in the Twenty-first Century British Library, London, 22-23 June 2018  The topic of scholar-activism has seen a recent resurgence in our contemporary political moment. To explore this topic, a transatlantic, scholar-activist conference will be held at the British Library on Friday June 22 and Saturday June 23. The conference will put scholars into conversation with activists to discuss how scholars and activists can work together, put recent social movements such as The Black Lives Matter Movement into scholarly and historical perspective, and highlight some ways in which scholars and activists in the US and UK are currently working together and engaging in efforts for social justice. The keynote speaker for the conference will be Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who will speak on “The Black Lives Matter movement in the Age of Trump.” Professor Heather Thompson, the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer prize, will also speak at the conference. We welcome […]

Creating Comics, Creative Comics Please Note: the deadline for this CFP has been extended until 25nd April 2018. University of South Wales: Cardiff (Friday 01.06.2018) USW Cardiff: Comics Symposium 2018, Call For Papers Key Note from Dr. Julia Round, Bournemouth University: ‘Anonymous Authors, Invisible Illustrators, and Collaborative Creation: Misty and British Girls’ Comics’ The First USW Cardiff: Comics Symposium is interested in creator’s perspectives. It will explore comics and creativity and papers are invited which examine the practice of creating comics, and the particulars of storytelling in comics. Does changing a panel, change the story? How might a medium’s materiality affect its construction and reception? Pudovkin stated that “In order to write a scenario suitable for filming, one must know the methods by which the spectator can be influenced from the screen.” (Pudovkin, 1949, p. 1), and referring to adaption Weaver suggests this is, “the act of translating a story […]

Call for Papers: Death and Celebrity Wednesday 6th June 2018, University of Portsmouth   Keynote Speakers: Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce, University of York Dr Samantha Matthews, University of Bristol   ‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil’ (John Milton)   ‘Fame is a food that dead men eat’ (Henry Austin Dobson)   This one-day symposium seeks to interrogate the role of death in the construction, negotiation and perpetuation of celebrity identity. For the ancients, true fame was necessarily posthumous, but in modernity, too, there remains an enduring fascination with what Andrew Bennett terms ‘the immortality effect’. Following the death of a celebrity, a variety of agents – friends, family, fans, professional associates, arts and heritage bodies – may interact to frame his/her legacy for posterity; moreover, celebrities themselves may take an active role in choreographing their cultural afterlives while still alive. Yet, while cementing, augmenting or rehabilitating the celebrity’s public […]

SANAS Biennial Conference The Genres of Genre: A Conference on Form, Format, and Cultural Formations Nov. 2 and 3, 2018, Lausanne North American Studies have always had an intense but ambivalent relationship to genre, as these narrative patterns have participated in nationalist processes as well as in narratives of resistance. Emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century from concerns about naturalism and realism, American literary scholarship after WWII avoided the politicized post-war atmosphere by making the ‘romance’ the quintessential American novel genre, while cinematic genres such as the musical or the Western contributed to amplifying the mythic dimension of American self-definition. Since then, American Studies scholars have pioneered influential work on melodrama, the American Gothic, the jeremiad and other genres. Concurrently, Canadian literature’s prominent nation-building narratives were framed as documentary tales of regionalism, historical novels and social realism before evolving into dystopian and postmodern fiction, most famously by Margaret […]

Université de Lille 3, UFR LEA, France, 12 octobre 2018 Over the last thirty odd-years, a growing number of film and TV productions have left the confines of Hollywood studios, either to benefit from interesting tax incentives or to find new scenery that can visually surprise audiences. The popular success of some of those ‘runaway’ films or TV series then prompted many fans to walk in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker in Tunisia (Star Wars), of Frodo in New Zealand (Lord of the Rings), of Harry Potter and his friends in Great Britain, of Katniss Everdeen in North Carolina (Hunger Games), of Daenerys or Jon Snow in Ireland or Malta (Game of Thrones), thus significantly increasing the number of visitors to those places and countries. Some of those tourists strongly wish to re-live on site what they saw on screen while others are simply curious to visit the filming locations. […]

TRADITIONS AND TRANSITIONS 28-29 September 2018 SOFIA, BULGARIA   DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES SOFIA UNIVERSITY “ST. KLIMENT OHRIDSKI”   Second Call for Papers The Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” invites scholars to submit proposals for the international conference Traditions and Transitions – to be held in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Department of English and American Studies at Sofia University and the 130th anniversary of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. People celebrate anniversaries in order to commemorate what has been achieved so far and to envision what should be achieved in the future. The event aims to look back at a distinguished past, and ahead to a challenging future. The conference seeks to bring together young and established scholars, and professors emeriti from academic institutions in Bulgaria and abroad, giving them a venue to debate and exchange views […]

Death & Culture II Conference 6-7 September 2018, University of York   Registration and abstract submission are now open for the second iteration of the Death and Culture conference taking place in September 2018. Registration fees include food and drink for the two days and a conference meal.   The human response to mortality is a research theme across the arts, humanities and social sciences. As a result, this conference seeks to provide a forum for networking and sharing interdisciplinary death scholarship. We welcome research rooted in empirical studies as well as conceptual and theoretical engagement which focus on cultural responses to death and the ways it has shaped understandings and perspectives on mortality. The conference, in its second iteration, seeks to continue engaging with the study of mortality as an academic enterprise, supported by evidence and framed by theoretical engagement. This truly interdisciplinary event brings together death scholars, including […]

The Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR), (University of Central Lancashire) would like to invite you to a conference co-organised with the Collegium for African American Research (CAAR),  Open Democracy 50.50, the Cornelia Goethe Center (Goethe University, Frankfurt); International Development and Inclusive Innovation, Strategic Research Area (The Open University) and De Gruyter: Women’s Spring: Feminism, Nationalism and Civil Disobedience 21-23 June 2018, University of Central Lancashire, Preston The aim of this conference is to explore the ways in which female activists and artists responded to the resurgence of far-right nationalism and the twin evil of religious fundamentalism. We want to take a closer look at grassroots emancipatory movements, women-led voluntary associations, as well as cultural texts by women – performances, installations, artworks, films and novels – in which authors take a stance against religious bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny. But we also invite contributions that focus on women’s endorsement […]

Expressions of Interest & Call for Papers: Sex and Celebrity PGR Workshop Thursday 28th June 2018, University of Portsmouth   Keynote Speaker: Professor John Mercer, Birmingham City University     This one-day PGR Workshop seeks to interrogate the relationship between sex and celebrity – the role of sex in the construction, negotiation and perpetuation of celebrity identity. As well as academic papers and roundtable discussion, this event will also include PGR professionalization sessions.   This free PGR workshop asks how sex and sexuality form, create and change our relationship to celebrity: how do sex and celebrity intersect? What roles do sex stories, exposés and scandals have in the formation and/or devaluing of celebrity? Is desire an inherent part of celebrity culture? How do attitudes to sex and celebrity change across time, cultures and societies? What role does the media play in forging links between sex and celebrity? How do film and […]

Let the Sun Shine In: American Theatre, Protest and Censorship An international conference co-sponsored by the American Theatre & Drama Society and the Eccles Centre for American Studies http://www.atds.org/ https://www.bl.uk/eccles-centre October 26-27, 2018 British Library, London (UK) Keynote speakers: Prof. Ramón Espejo Romero, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) Dr. Marlis Schweitzer, York University (Canada) In 1968, the American musical Hair opened on Broadway, in London's West End, and in Munich, West Germany. Hailed by many for capturing the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, Hair also reflected changes in the writing and production of American theatre. Produced Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, it emerged from experimental theatre practice to achieve commercial success on Broadway and internationally. Staging contemporary protest and dissent, the musical was censored on tour in Boston but became the first production to open after the Theatres Act ended both censorship in British theatre and the power of the Lord Chamberlain. This conference investigates American theatre, […]

Living Well With Books Call for Papers Centre for Material Texts, Richmond Building, University of Bristol Wednesday 5 – Friday 7 September 2018   Since the invention of the codex, the lives (and afterlives) of books have been intertwined with the lives of people. This interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational conference organized by the Centre for Material Texts, University of Bristol, aims to explore how books have affected and continue to affect our daily lives and well-being. How we have lived with books in the past, how do we live with them in the present, how we might live with them better in the future, and how might we help others do the same?   As readers, writers, creative practitioners, educators, researchers, curators, consumers and producers, how do books feature in our lives? How do they share our living and working spaces? How might books contribute to health and wellbeing? Do […]