Deadline: December 5, 2021
In person ONLY
The American University of Rome
16-18 June 2022
Keynote Speaker
Professor Stephen Gundle, University of Warwick, UK
‘Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Changing Shape of Italian Cinema and Media Studies’
Organizing Committee
Flavia Laviosa, Wellesley College, United States
Catherine Ramsey-Portolano, The American University of Rome, Italy
The year 2022 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies. Published by Intellect (UK) and co-sponsored by Wellesley College (USA), it remains the only English language journal on Italian cinema and media.
In the past ten years, we have been inclusive in our efforts to establish connections with scholars from several continents. We have also made it our mission to explore the resonance of Italian film in the world across times, themes, styles and genres. After publishing the first four issues—two on Italy and Asia (2:1 & 2:3, 2014), a third on Italy and Latin America (10:2, 2022), and the fourth one on Italy and post-socialist countries (2023), and organizing two international conferences (2027 & 2019), the Journal has created a large community of scholars of diverse disciplines, all engaged in studying the artistic intersections between Italy and other countries.
As we celebrate this anniversary, we are prepared to move forward with new explorations and discussions aimed at expanding these interconnected academic communities, with a focus on a broader understanding of Italian cinema and media in international artistic contexts.
As we reflect on the state of the disciplines (cinema and media studies), we open this CFP to a wide range of themes, with the intent of offering a unifying horizon that will allow scholars to explore diverse fields and topics in a broad international context and move forward with new studies, building the future of both the discipline and the journal.
With this CFP, the conference organizers invite proposals from scholars, independent researchers, cinema and media professionals, and graduate students for single papers, pre-constituted panels, and roundtables.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Post-cinema (intersectionality of cinema and social media)
- Social media (media ecologies, national branding, Facebook, Whatsapp)
- Cinema and media on demand: Amazon, Hulu, Netflix (from the theater to the home, watchers as content creators, multiplatform television, algorithms and taste)
- Non-theatrical cinema and media (industrial cinema and media, commercials, propaganda, didactic cinema and media)
- Immersive technologies (virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, spatial audio and artificial intelligence)
- Series (TV series, web series, pay TV, new frontiers in storytelling, transnational narratives, international circulation of TV series)
- Media, cultures, identity, politics, gender (mass vs. niche media, ‘Audience’ and practices of participation, representations of power, popular culture, feminism, (in)equities in access and digital divide, politics of media and media in politics, embodiment, multicultural media, identities from stars to selfies, mediation and remediation, ideologies, gender)
- Crime television (crime and crisis, restaging history, social change through popular crime media, challenging stereotypes and discrimination, transnational productions, transcultural formats)
- Popular genres and transnationalism (Western, Sci-Fi)
- Migrant stardom (e.g. Raffaella Carrà)
- Women in media industries (directors, writers, actors, transnational mobility)
- Writing in cinema (screenwriting, revising, translating, subtitling, adaptations)
- Reception (transnational, intermedial, critical, popular)
- Plurimediality and transmediality (cartoons, comics, graphic novels, fotoromanzi)
- Political cinema (reality, history, fiction)
- Archives and digital resources
- Cinema and the digital humanities
- Plurilingualism in cinema
- Landscape, environment, urban and rural in cinema
- Comedy and transnational reception
- Italian cinema and Latin American cinema
- Italian cinema and post-socialist cinemas
- Postcolonial Italian cinema
- Italian cinema in dialogue with other art/cultural trends (theatre, visual arts, literature)
- Italian cinema and the labor world/labor activities
- Form(s) in contemporary cinema
- Critical Posthumanism and Italian Cinema
- Housing and the home in Italian cinema and television
- Cinema schools in Italy (history, curricula, international students’ careers) (e.g. Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, other CSC schools).
The languages of the conference are English and Italian. Proposals for virtual papers will not be considered.
Please send an abstract of 250 words plus a short bio of 100 words for single papers, or 350 words for panels (including the aims of the panel and summaries of each contribution specifying the names of filmmakers, artists, films, media etc.) followed by individual titles, panelists’ bios, current academic affiliation, and emails for pre-constituted panels with 3 speakers, or roundtables in Italian or in English in a word.doc format, no pdf. We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations (inclusive of film clips). We welcome presentations using both conventional tools and video-essay commentaries.
Abstracts for consideration should be submitted to Flavia Laviosa at flaviosa@wellesley.edu.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 5 December 2021. Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be sent out to authors by 30 December 2021.
Participants will receive a complimentary copy of JICMS and will be able to purchase Intellect publications at a special conference discounted price.
Conference registration fee includes: 2 lunches, opening and closing receptions.
The deadline for inclusion in the conference program is 15 March 2022. Please, make every effort to pay conference fees before this date.
€ 200 regular rate (€ 100 for 1 day)
€ 150 student rate (€ 75 for 1 day)
The registration fee will be paid to AUR and the website will be available in January 2022.
In case of withdrawals the registration fee will not be reimbursed.
In case of cancellation of the conference the registration fee will be reimbursed.
Extra
Post-conference tour. Destination to be determined: Sunday 19 June 2022