CFP: Cinematic Journeys of Identity—2015 Film & History Conference
(Nov. 4-8, 2015, Madison, WI)

http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/conference/2015/CFP/Journeys_of_Iden...

In keeping with this year’s focus of “Journeys, Detours, Breakdowns,” we seek to explore film as a visual technology that works to formulate, map, image, and indeed, imagine identity. While cinematic journeys can come to us explicitly in the form of a traveling filmmaker or a narrative that itself is about traveling, there is also the journey of the audience, taking flight and following the itinerary charted by the film. In this regard, this area is interested in what Tom Conley calls the “cartographic impulse.”

Identities, however, are often in flux. In the current period of increased globalization and transnational communications and media for example, the identification of the self, and “other” has become more complex. What role then, does cinema play in the formulation and negotiation of these identities? Open to a wide understanding of cinematic journeys, possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The representation of identity in expedition and travel films (Encounters at the End of the World; Y Tu Mama, También)
• National and transnational identities in cinema (Dirty, Pretty Things; Colonel Redl, The Bus)
• Structures of identity in ethnographic and anthropologic cinema (in the work of both early and contemporary filmmakers, from Martin and Osa Johnson to D. A. Pennebaker)
• Diasporic cinema and cinema of migration (Half of a Yellow Sun, Sin Nombre)

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including an e-mail address, for each presenter. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (www.filmandhistory.org).

Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by July 1, 2015, to the area chairs:

Jessica DePrest
UCLA
Jess.deprest@gmail.com

Saundarya Thapa
UCLA
saundarya@gmail.com