2006 Film&History League Conference: “The Documentary Tradition” Area: PBS (Public Broadcasting System) Over the years, PBS has aired hundreds of documentaries dealing with history; the network has defined the historical documentary. On the PBS website you can click on “The American Experience” and see a list of sixty-two films from, “America 1900,” “The Battle Over Citizen Kane,” and “Fly Girls,” to “The Wright Stuff,” and “Zoot Suit Riots.” Series such as “American Masters,” “Frontline” and “Ken Burns American Stories” have offered scores of films informing the American public on matters historical. We have learned about slavery, our founders, our Presidents, our wars, our civil rights, and our artists, from PBS. How much have we learned? How effective are PBS documentaries as instruments of learning? Or, at the very least, how thought-provoking are these films?

WOMEN on PBS: The American Masters Series have dealt with Stella Adler, Lucille Ball, Julia Child, Willa Cather, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Martha Grahham, Lilian Gish,Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Elaine May, Georgia O’Keefe, Katherine Anne Porter, Sarah Vaughan and Alice Waters. The American Experience has aired biographies of Amelia Earhart, Nelly Bly, Eleanor Roosevelt, Emma Goodman, Eudora Welty, Fly Girls, Hawaii’s Last Queen , Ida B. Wells, Angie Debo, The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, A Midwife’s Tale, Miss America, One Woman, One Vote, The Pill, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Sins of our Mothers and Tupperware!

Currently, papers are being proposed ranging from Marilyn Monroe to “The Assent of Man.” The possibilities for presentation topics are nearly endless! We all watch PBS; so now let’s discuss and critique their films among colleagues.

We are inviting submissions concerning documentaries aired on PBS.

Deadline for submission is September 15, 2006.

The Film&History conference dates are November 8-12, 2006. The conference will take place at the Dolce Conference Center near the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

Details of the conference—including a list of other areas—can be found at www.filmandhistory.org

Send all inquiries and proposals concerning PBS documentaries to:

Suzanne Broderick
slbrode@ilstu.edu
Department of History
Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61761
309 438-3345