Cinematic representations of crisis and disaster embody an alternative memory in the sense that they re-negotiate historical happenings and monopolize the discursive, fragmented individual memories by creating a selective and repressive official narrative. What has remained a private act of remembering the suffering and violence thus becomes a politicized collective memory that predicates on the rhetoric of desire, anxiety, and resistance. When the audience is invited to relive the disasters in a politically mediated and emotionally pre-conditioned filmic narrative, they unconsciously participate in the orchestration of a collective alternative memory that superimposes on individual remembrance. Papers that explore the politics of memory and history in the cinema of crisis are welcome. Topics of interests include, but not limited to:

-the dynamics between personal memory and the social function of memory in disaster films -visual authenticity and tropes of change
-spectatorial participation and viewers’ agency
-special effects and the power of representation
-individual resistance and grand narrative
-private recollection and mediated mass experience
-emotional investment and political agenda
-catharsis and desire

Please use the conference's web page to submit your paper proposal: http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

The deadline for submission is November 15, 2011. Please feel free to contact me at jli@unca.edu if you have any questions.