FIRST USM CONFERENCE ON FILM AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Conference Theme: Projecting Light into Hollywood's Shadows:
Trans/National Cinemas and Cultural Identity
The Visual Studies Project at the University of Southern Mississippi, in conjunction with the College of International and Continuing Education, the College of the Arts, the Department of History and the Department of Radio, Television & Film announce the First USM Conference on Film and International Studies to be held February 10-12, 2000 at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The conference will convene concurrently with the Southern Mississippi International Film Festival.
From the end of World War One up to the present day, Hollywood films have dominated the world's movie screens. Endeavoring in the shadows of Hollywood, global cinemas have employed myriad economic and aesthetic strategies to compete with and contest Hollywood's hegemony. National governments, for instance, have consistently attempted to foster domestic film production as a method of combating imported mass culture and its perceived detrimental effects on national identity. But just how "national" are national cinemas? Conversely, to what extent can Hollywood cinema itself be viewed as an inter- or transnational cinema? Global cinemas, including Hollywood, have rarely been purely "national" enterprises. To the contrary, hybridity and the intervention of international capital, technology, and personnel have often marked world cinema. The program committee invites proposals and panels that explore questions of cultural identity within these transnational contexts of film production, representation, and reception, both historically and during the present moment.
We solicit a broad range of papers representing diverse geographic foci and methodological approaches. Papers which problematize notions of national and regional cinema are especially encouraged.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- national cinemas, representation, and the construction of national identity
- analyses of individual films
- transnational film stars/directors
- reception of Hollywood and/or national cinemas abroad
- national cinemas, the global marketplace, and questions of language,
subtitling , and dubbing
- national cinemas and propaganda during wartime and peace
- transnational racial discourses and global cinemas
- subordinate cultures and national cinemas (including the US)
Please submit abstracts of papers (250 words) and of panels (including
abstracts of each paper) no later than November 19, 1999 to Brian O'Neil at the address below:
Final program decisions will be made by December 6, 1999. Selected
conference papers will be published in a special issue of The Southern
Quarterly.
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