Publication: November 2018
Guest Editors: Dr Jodi Brooks (UNSW), Dr Kathleen Williams (University of Tasmania), Dr Jessica Ford (UNSW) and Melanie Robson (UNSW)
In her Fall 2014 Film Quarterly editorial film theorist B. Ruby Rich writes,
“Cinema itself is in a state of immense transition, yet it’s hard not to notice that attention is lavished disproportionately on technology and auteurist style, with the question of theme, focus, and subject matter repeatedly sidelined. What, though, is “filmable” today? And what is “theorizable” in response?”
Rich highlights how academic and journalistic discussions of the ‘new media’ landscape in recent years have focused largely on technology and industry over content, theorisation, and disciplinary boundaries. Considerable academic work has examined how the conditions of the convergence era have been enabled by and impact upon technology, production, distribution, and consumption and the media industry more broadly (Turner & Tay 2009; Gripsrund 2010; Lotz 2014; Haven & Lotz 2017). Building on this work, this symposium seeks to engage with the convergence of film and media at the level of content, authorship, genre, aesthetics, style and form.
While today ‘cinema’ is an increasingly fluid term that moves across platforms, genres, and textual boundaries, in this symposium we are interested in what it means to study cinema and/or other forms of screen-media in today’s increasingly fractured media landscape. This symposium will explore the transitional nature of contemporary screen studies and the movement of scholarship, theory, and ideas across its boundaries. We invite scholars working across film, television, video, and internet genres to present on topics such as:
Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to screen media
Applying a single discipline to study a screen text not in that discipline
In what ways are different screen-based media texts informing and shaping one another?
What are the textual, generic and/or aesthetic boundaries that define film/television/video today?
What is the place of screen audiences in the increasingly convergent/divergent media landscape?
What is the continuing value of single discipline approaches in a critical landscape dominated by interdisciplinary screen studies?
What is lost when single discipline approaches are incorporated into screen studies?
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2018
Deadline for full papers: 13 May 2018
All submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed. Proposed title, abstract (300 words), short biography and institutional affiliation should be sent to sydneyscreenstudies@gmail.com by 1 February 2018.
When considering your reaction to this call for papers, fusion encourages and accepts all forms of media. Please consult the journal website for more details on this special issue: http://www.fusion-journal.com
