What’s Queer in Italian Film History?
Looking for Non-normative Representations from the Silent Era to the 1960s

Download the CFP
<http://www.airsc.org/callforpapers/?fbclid=IwAR3bxr7OyfY5V9dr9CurS7nlqqh8MrS-4AyWriggyZ0fKuVgwCl4uZxZOu4>

Deadline: 20 December 2019

From the early 1990s onward, the theoretical reflection on gender
identities and non-binary sexualities (Butler 1990; Sedgwick 1990;
Koyama 2003) has increasingly challenged the assumption of hegemonic
paradigms of heteronormativity as totalizing categories of gender
identities and sexualities. In the last few years, critiques of
heteronormativity have moved forward from the analysis of contemporary
cultural products to the proposal of new paths of historical inquiry,
which are gaining currency under the label of “queer historicism”
(McCabe 2005).

In this context, Italian cinema historiography—which only recently has
been able to incorporate the perspectives of feminist film studies
(Cardone 2009; Pravadelli 2012; Hipkins 2016; Dall’Asta 2008)—has
remained so far reluctant to apply transfeminist (Koyama 2001) and queer
approaches to the representation of gender and sexuality. And yet,
destabilizing forms of gender representation and non-normative modes of
reception can be found through the history of Italian cinema since its
origins. From Fregoli and the farcical performances of comedians like
André Deed (Cretinetti), Raymond Frau (Kri Kri) and Gigetta Morano, to a
unique film of its kind like /Filibus /(1915), the use of crossdressing
to display unconventional gender roles was more than familiar to Italian
film audiences. The popular “forzuti” of the 1910s introduced a model of
a hypertrophic (although basically asexual) virility that stimulated
both male and female gazes for generations, well beyond the 1960s (Dyer
1997). The popular genres that flourished in the 1950s, such as the
spaghetti westerns and horrors, have nurtured the fantasies of
international queer audiences with images of duels imbued with
homosexual desire, rebellious dancing witches and ambiguous vampire
beauties. The 1950s and 1960s saw film theatres become meeting and
cruising sites for queer communities, and this not just in big cities
like Rome, Milan and Florence, but also in many provincial towns (Pini
2011). More generally—and similarly to the experience of other queer
audiences living in different geographical and historical contexts
(Russo 1981; Doty 1993; Dyer 2001)—the ritual of collective film
consumption offered non-normative subjectivities an opportunity to
develop and express original forms of spectatorship and cinephilia
(Santi 1954). Detecting and collecting the feeble traces of such
ephemeral experiences is a critical task for the methodology of queer
archiving (Przybylo and Cooper 2014).

Based on these premises, this special issue of /Immagine /aims to assess
the viability and productivity of a queer approach to the archive of
Italian film history, from the origins to the 1960s, taking a chance to
discover evidences that can trouble the established picture provided by
traditional male and heteronormative accounts. The ambition is to
contribute to the methodological reflections inspired by queer
historicism, keeping in mind that queer theory is obviously in dialogue
with both postcolonial and intersectional approaches to gender,
sexuality, class and ethnicity (Dominguez-Ruvalcaba 2016; Giuliani
2017). In particular, a queer approach to Italian film history
challenges static notions of national cinema, encouraging the adoption
of transnational and transcultural perspectives (Schoonover and Galt, 2017).

We welcome methodological reflections that interrogate the criticalities
of queer historicism, and specifically of the notion of “queer
anachronism” (Rohy 2017): Is it reasonable to detect queerness in films
that were produced at a time when non-binary subjects did not identify
as queer yet? How can queer historicism integrate and/or dialogue with
other approaches, such as those developed in the related fields of
feminist, gay and lesbian film historiographies (Gledhill and Knight
2015; Benshoff e Griffin 2006; Giori 2017)? How can it help understand
certain eccentric projects, born outside of the mainstream of Italian
film styles, such as those developed by Aldo Braibanti and Carmelo Bene?
And finally, to paraphrase Heather Love’s reflections (2007), what is
the meaning for us, today, of a history in which queerness and isolated
queer figures emerged from a film culture that fostered homophobia and
stigmatized queer bodies?


Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:


* Border-crossing heteronormative conventions in popular genres

* Queering the Cult: subcultural practices and fandom inspired by
actors and stars

* Home movies

* Queer performances: Gender bending, drag and masquerade

* Queer temporalities: Anachronisms, queer historicism, queer
archives, anti-futurity

* Eccentric film styles and projects

* Film theaters as cruising sites

* Queer film criticism

* Transnational and transcultural dialogism

* Italian /auteur/cinema and the queer gaze

* Documentaries and non normative sexuality

* Melodrama, sexuality/asexuality and romance

* Archiving the history of queer cinema and spectatorship

* Disability and queerness


Abstracts, either in Italian or English (max. 250 words), will have to
be submitted no later than 20 December 2019 to:

dmissero@brookes.ac.uk <mailto:dmissero@brookes.ac.uk>

micaela.veronesi@gmail.com <mailto:micaela.veronesi@gmail.com>

Notification of acceptance by 7 January 2020.

Articles (5-6,000 words max.) can be submitted in Italian or English, by
14 June 2020.

Final publication is expected by December 2020, after the conclusion of
a double bind peer review process.

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: A Critical exploration of "The Joker"

Retuning the Screen.
Sound Methods and the Aural Dimension of Film & Media History

XXVII International Film and Media Studies Conference
March 26th – 28th 2020, University of Udine
Gorizia, Italy

More than twenty years have passed since Rick Altman famously proclaimed
sound studies “a field whose time has come" (1999), magnifying a then
growing body in film scholarship: the research interests he and his
colleagues have systematically pursued since the early eighties, at the
Iowa University. Altman's statement helped in unravelling an
interdisciplinary undercurrent in American, European and non-English
speaking film scholarship - Michel Chion’s widely influential works were
published approximately at the same time.

As Michele Hilmes later stated, the sound has been an “always emerging
and never emerged” area of interest, “doomed to a position on the
margins of the various fields of scholarship, whispering unobtrusively
in the background while the main action occurs elsewhere” (Hilmes 2005:
249). Nevertheless, Sound Studies have progressively become an
internationally recognised (and sometimes criticised: Feld 2015)
interdisciplinary
tendency since the early 2000s, redeeming aurality from its
ever-marginal position and foregrounding it as an area of inquiry in its
own right.

Whereas this renewed interest did encourage explorations on previously
neglected aspects of film and videosound (Birtwistle 2010; Rogers 2014;
Iannotta 2018)., scholars interested in aurality only occasionally dwelt
on cinema and visual media: however, they contributed to fresh
perspectives and angles. Think at the researches on acoustic
architecture of movie theatres and film studios (Thompson 2002; Meandri
2016) or at the studies on the relation between art-film and urban
spaces and media/soundscapes (Birdsall 2012), or on other sonic artistic
expressions (Halliday 2013).

This year the FilmForum conference aims at enhancing the emergence and
consolidation of these aurally oriented perspectives, as innovative
entry points in film and media theory and history at large. As Jonathan
Sterne has argued, to think sonically does not so much imply sound as an
exclusive object of interest. Instead, it outlines an alternative path
to be pursued through history, a different mapping of the same
territory, a distinct epistemological position (Sterne 2003; 2012).
Following this approach, we are not interested in exploring the aural
“segment” of audiovisual texts (i.e. the soundtrack) for their
expressive and artistic significance. Neither we are exclusively
concerned with “audio” and technologically mediated sound in itself.
Instead, our general objective is to understand how the theoretical
concepts and methods developed to investigate aurality could reframe
cinema and visual media as research objects.


Moving from these general premises, we will primarily focus on the
following areas of interest.


- Aural epistemologies and metaphors of the audition. Albeit mostly
visually biased, film and media theory has always made use of sonically
inspired terms and concepts far beyond their literal meaning. Words such
as “noise” or “voice” may indicate an unwanted element of communication
and a marker and signifier of social identities and gender differences,
respectively. The concept of “rhythm” served as a modernist notion to
interpret the changes in the interfaces between the organic and the
machinic and with the temporal dimension of cinematography itself (Cowan
2012). However, recent studies proposed equally aurally and temporally
inspired neologisms to address the technological specificities of
contemporary digital media – e.g. Ernst’s "sonicity" (2016). Such
extensive use of the aural vocabulary raises questions about the
metaphor of listening as a "constitutive feature of epistemology"
(Sterne 2012).How did aural figures such as “soundscape” (Schafer 1977),
"secondary orality” (Ong 1989), or "acousmatic” (Schaeffer 1952; Kane
2016) contribute to shaping our understanding of the overall media
experience? Can these terms be critically scrutinised or re-assessed as
tools for media and film analysis?


- Cinema and media in/and listening culture.**The notion of
“auditory/listening culture” is one of the key concepts introduced by
Sound Studies. Traditionally described as a purely affective and
eternally archaic sense (Adorno-Eisler 1947), the hearing has been
recently re-assessed as the result of historical, social and cultural
construction. Its characteristics may significantly be varying. It
depends on the "network of practices that communities of listeners
participate in when they hear relevant features of the auditory world,
communicate them to others, and pass them on through training” (Kane
2017). To offer but an example, the shift from “silent” film to
synchronised sound certainly changed what we expected to hear in a movie
theatre, but also our set of practices and routines as spectators.
Professionals in the film industry were suddenly required to become
acquainted new audile techniques as “technical skills which can be
developed and used toward instrumental ends” (Sterne 2003). We can argue
the same for other stages and aspects of film and media history. How did
cinema and visual media emerge from or react to a given aural culture,
and how did they contribute to shaping it? To which extent the modern
and contemporary spectatorship interweave the formation of the modern
and contemporary listener? Does film culture contribute to cultivating
our listening practices as well? Which sonic skills can be considered
representative of the modern and contemporary media culture?


- Sound archives and archaeology. Retrieving the sounds of the past is
an ever-challenging task which confronts scholars and historians with a
wide array of sources. As already stressed (Birdsall 2015, 2017;
Birdsall –Tkackzyk 2019), a close dialogue with the established field of
Film Preservation Studies would help in promoting sound archives as a
distinct object of study. It could foster a systematic reflection on the
preservation methods, institutions and infrastructures and on the formal
practices of restoration, exhibition and creative re-use of sonic
materials. And still, however important, sound recordings alone may
suffice to fully reconstruct historical soundscape and significance for
the cultures of the past. Can non-sounding written and/or material
records (e.g. scripts, physical places, architectural designs) enrich
our knowledge on the aural dimension of cinema and media? Can the
research and excavation methods developed in sound and music archaeology
(see Smith 1999) be fruitfully applied also in film and media history?

We encourage contributions addressing any of these areas or the
interrelationships occurring between them. We invite you to send us
proposals for papers or panels. Proposals should not exceed one page in
length. Please make sure to attach a short biographical note (10 lines
max). The deadline for their submission is *DECEMBER 31st 2019*

A registration fee (160 euros) will be applied. Moreover travel costs
(tickets, etc.) will not be refunded. On the other hand, we will
partially cover the costs of your accommodation (2 nights in the best
accommodation solutions available). Special rates are available for
additional nights. For more information, please contact us at
udineconference@gmail.com <mailto:udineconference@gmail.com>.

Reappraising Stephen King (Horror Studies journal special)


Stephen King is indisputably a major figure in horror. Not only has he
been a proliferous best-selling author since the 1970s, his name is also
associated with a number of television and film texts, including a
number of recent high-profile releases, such as It and The Dark Tower,
as well as Stranger Things, a series not authored by King but openly
nostalgic for his work. King’s influence moreover extends beyond horror,
crossing into other genres and outside of the world of fiction,
including social commentary (Guns, as well as numerous public
appearances), genre history and criticism (Danse Macabre), and reading
and writing practice (On Writing).

Testimony to King’s significance is the constant popular appetite for
reflections on his life and work, from Douglas Winter’s The Art of
Darkness: Stephen King (1986) to Chad Clark’s Tracing the Trails (2018),
and a number of similar publications in between. Academic work is not
hard to find either, though it is sometimes constrained by the critical
ambivalence surrounding King’s name, and has tended to privilege
specific topics, such as King’s relationship with Hollywood. Tony
Magistrale has authored, co-authored, and edited a number of books on
King’s fiction, his films, and his position as “America’s storyteller”
(2009). Other recent books have addressed King’s film and television
adaptations (Brown 2018) and the Gothic in King’s work (Sears 2011), and
some isolated articles exist on specific texts by or associated with
Stephen King, suggesting continued intellectual interest but only
scratching the surface of what could be asked in relation to a figure of
this status.

The aim of this Horror Studies special is to open up the discussion
about Stephen King at a time when he seems especially relevant. Selected
articles will, therefore, present focused arguments that tread new
ground and pursue new avenues for examining King’s work, influence, and
significance.

Topics may include:

· King and the critics

· King as social, cultural, and political commentator

· King in the age of Trump

· King, philosophy, and religion

· King and the politics of conspiracy

· King and the publishing industry

· King and storytelling

· King and screenwriting

· Authorial presence in King’s work

· King and collaborative authorship

· Intertextuality within King

· King’s crime/mystery/horror hybrids

· King, the short story, and other formats

· King and the 19th Century realist novel

· King’s writing of genre history

· King as spokesperson for horror

· King beyond horror

· The Kings, a family of writers

Please submit proposals and expressions of interest to Dr Filipa Antunes
(a.antunes@uea.ac.uk) by 1 November 2019. Full drafts will be expected
by August 2020.

There's one week left to submit proposals for the Doing Women's Film &
Television History conference. See further details below:

Doing Women’s Film and Television History V: Forming Histories/Histories
in Formation

20th-22nd May, 2020, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

Speakers include:
Kasandra O’Connell: Head of the Irish Film Archive at the Irish Film
Institute in Dublin City Centre. The Irish Film Archive holds a
collection that includes over one hundred years of Irish film as well as
other audiovisual material.
Kate Murphy (Bournemouth University) and Jeannine Baker (Macquarie
University) will speak about their collaboration with the BBC on the 100
Voices that Made the BBC: Pioneering Women which was launched in 2018
and features a curation of the contributions of women to BBC
broadcasting. See the project here:
https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/pioneering-women Annie
Doona, President of Institute of Art, Design and Technology and Chair of
Screen Ireland
Ruth Barton, Professor of Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin
Susan Liddy, co-chair of Women in Film & Television Ireland and lecturer
at University of Limerick
Anne O’Brien, lecturer at Maynooth University and author of Women,
Inequality and Media work (2019)
Abigail Keating, lecturer at University College Cork and co-founder of
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

We'll also have a roundtable discussion about women in the film and
television industry.