Conferences

Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema – 11th International DOMITOR conference

The DOMITOR conference takes place Sunday, 13-17 June 2010, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and a call for papers has been issued:

The DOMITOR 2010 Conference seeks to demonstrate how early cinema’s cultural function and social uses were shaped by a range of institutions, both commercial and noncommercial. DOMITOR 2010 will be a forum to present new research into extra-filmic contexts that broaden our understanding of the institutional basis for cinema during its formative years. To that end, we invite papers that explore the following areas, among others:

• Extra-theatrical venues and publics for cinema exhibition: churches, settlement houses, social organisations such as libraries and museums, commercial settings such as department stores, and other marginal sites and marginalised audiences
• Purposes of cinema beyond entertainment: using cinema for education, uplift, religion, advertising, scientific exploration, politics, and journalism
• Networks of promotion and regulation of cinema: newspapers, the trade press, fan magazines, but also censor boards, organised labour, and court rooms
• Institutional relationships between film companies and other media and social institutions: film producers’ dealings with charities, corporations, civic and political groups, and film production by such groups
• Perpetuating early cinema through preservation and appreciation: the work in subsequent decades of archives, criticism, buying and collecting, and the study of film history itself

Proposal submission process
Those wishing to submit a proposal should do so no later than 31 October 2009 to: domitor2010@gmail.com Proposals for pre-constituted panels of 3 or 4 participants will also be considered; such proposals should be submitted by the panel chair and consist of the collected individual paper proposals in addition to a brief rationale for the pre-constituted panel. Proposals for individual papers should be no longer than 500 words and be written in either English or French. Only a paper written in one of those two languages can be presented at the conference. Papers prepared for conference delivery should stay within a word limit of 2500 words and be able to fit within a 20-minute presentation format (including any audiovisual material used to supplement the paper). We request that all papers be submitted by 30 April 2010 to allow for simultaneous translation. While membership in DOMITOR is not required to submit a proposal, anyone presenting a paper at the conference must be a member.

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Charlie in the Heartland: An International Charlie Chaplin Conference

Charlie in the Heartland: An International Charlie Chaplin Conference takes place 28-30 October 2010 at Ohio University Zanesville, Zanesville, Ohio. Confirmed speakers include Charles J. Maland, David Robinson, Kate Guyonvarch, Cecilia Cenciarelli, and Frank Scheide.

This is the call for papers:

In keeping with the theme of the conference, “Charlie in the Heartland,” which was chosen to commemorate Chaplin’s first trip to the United States with Fred Karno’s comedians in October, 1910, we are seeking papers in a wide range of areas, all to do with Chaplin, his relationship with, influence on, or evocation of America, either during or after his long residence here.

The following topics are meant to generate ideas for presentations, not limit creativity or exclude participation:

• Maland’s Chaplin and American Culture 30 Years later
• Reconsidering “Chaplinitis”
• From Karno to Keystone: eliding the music hall stage and the silent screen
• American vaudeville audiences of the 1910s – a herald of silent film popularity?
• Chaplin’s company: who were Charlie’s character actors and what were their influences?
• Vulgar film comedy as high art
• Chaplin and public appearance: a reconsideration of the Liberty Bond tour
• The Chaplin imitator phenomenon
• Film audience reception in the Heartland
• The Heartland rebels: Chaplin and the American Legion
• Brother Sydney Chaplin: what was the magnitude of his impact?
• The representation of America or Americans in the films of Charlie Chaplin
• Chaplin’s little tramp and the Beat Generation in America

Individual papers or full panels are welcome to submit proposals.

Please send a 500-word abstract, a short bio and your contact information to Lisa Stein, Assistant Professor of English, OU-Zanesville, 1425 Newark Road, Zanesville, OH 43701 or via email by February 1, 2010. Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to submit.

N.B. We have tried to make this an accessible conference for young scholars by offering several low-cost housing options, as well as a reduced registration rate. We will also have a student travel grant available for applicants. Check back in early 2010.

Attendees are also promised a Chaplin feature film plus shorts, outtakes and oddities; a Chaplin film parody competition; a Chaplin lookalike contest; and a ‘juried art show: “America in 1910″.

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The 1910 Centenary Symposium

The Scottish Network of Modernist Studies and the British Association of Modernist Studies are organising ‘The 1910 Centenary Symposium’, to be held at the University of Glasgow, December 2010, which takes Viriginia Woolf’s 1924 statement “On or about December 1910, human character changed” as its theme. This is the pre-call for papers:

We are inviting scholars from any discipline to respond to any aspect of this statement by suggesting panels and papers. A formal call for papers will follow later this year. Current panel proposals under consideration include: 1910 films; Scotland 1910; Women in 1910; and 2010: Human Character in the Age of Climate Change. Other areas that have been suggested as possible include: periodization; The Post-impressionist exhibition; 1910 from 1924; the grammar of modernism; 1910 and social/political activism.

Plenary speakers will include Jean-Michel Rabaté (University of Pennsylvia) and David Peters Corbett (University of York). The conference aims to bring together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, from the UK and beyond. Although the majority of participants are likely to be modernist scholars, we do not want to limit participation to those who regard themselves as modernist scholars, and are keen to include the kind of oppositional and interrogative stances that the tone of the quotation implicitly encourages.

Proposals for panels and papers and expressions of interest should be sent to conference organisers Bryony Randall and Matthew Creasy via email at snms[at]arts.gla.ac.uk