“…our current state of theorizing about genocide [is] the product of a recent, incomplete and evolving process as well as a contested one” (Levon Chorbajian in Studies in Comparative Genocide, 1999).

Since its first appearance in the short films of the Lumiere Brothers and even earlier in the Stanford-Muybridge photographic experiments, the moving image has been used to capture reality, witness events, and grant people a sense of immortality. Following the Armenian genocide and the First World War, journalists, politicians and everyday people began to notice that film could be a powerful tool for documenting and understanding atrocities and acts of war. During the Second World War, newsreels played a seminal role as a propaganda tool to provide incentive for people to join the army and then furnished local theaters with images from the war. Some of this footage turned up in fictional films about the war and in the Nuremberg trials court cases as key pieces of evidence used to bring Nazi officials to trial. The first half of the 20th century gave an impulse to the important relationship between film and genocide. The second half of the century has seen this unfortunate, contested relationship grow and expand in cinema from various parts of the world.

We seek submissions for a collection of essays that explores the role of film (both fiction and documentary) in documenting, witnessing, denouncing and reflecting upon genocide in different regions of the world. A university press has expressed interest in the book project.

Email (approx) 250 word abstracts to: kmwilson@stanford.edu and/or tcrowder@stanford.edu by March 30, 2008. Complete essays will be due by July 30, 2008.

Kristi M. Wilson is the co-editor of Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2007), and Tomás Crowder is a contributing writer to the same collection.