[ecrea] CFP: Disappearing War research workshop

>
> Research workshop:
>
> “Disappearing War”
>
> Cinema and the politics of erasure in the war on terror
>
> Monday 13th April 2015, Minghella Building, University of Reading, UK
>
>
> Call for papers:
>
> The war on terror and the battles that have been fought in its name 
have fueled a rigorous debate about the changing nature of war. Is the 
war on terror even a war? Should we think of the US-led invasions of 
Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 as large-scale counter-terrorism / 
counter-insurgency operations rather than wars in the traditional sense? 
Highlighting the effects of technological advances, drawing on 
statistics and the alleged precision of modern warfare, some scholars 
have moved to argue that war is declining and the idea of peace is 
gaining traction in the world. Others, emphasizing the complex 
experiences of war, reject claims of war's disappearance. They argue 
that that it is the geography of wars that is changing and that new 
spaces such as counter-terrorism operations in the West are increasingly 
more war-like. What these emerging notions of contemporary war lack is a 
meaningful engagement with the full extent of collateral damage and the 
experience of its victims. In more theoretical terms, what is missing 
from the debate is a focus on the fragmentary evidence on which our 
knowledge of contemporary war is based. The unprecedented level of 
technologization and visual mediation that marks the experience of life 
in the here and now raises an acute question: how do we know war?
>
> The privileged act of analyzing at a remove from the geographical 
theaters of war entails that we experience the characteristics of modern 
war by proxy. Specifically, the proliferation of visual media 
interventions make visible that to which we have no direct access. As a 
consequence, visual media becomes the new battle ground for war to take 
place, shaping understandings of what war is, what it does and what it 
does not do. Cinema, with its wide reach and powerful affective 
potential, has the ability to make visible to us, and in a sense allows 
us to experience, the wars from which we are physically removed. At the 
same time, the ability of cinema to select what we see engenders a 
necessarily partial view which carries the risk that wars’ brutality is 
simply erased from the picture.
>
> The workshop seeks to address these different processes of erasure 
and their consequences for our understanding of modern wars: What is 
made visible, and what is not? How do we experience what we see and 
hear? What are the consequences of these impressions and experiences for 
our understanding of contemporary wars?
>
> We invite 20-minute papers on the above topic, and particularly 
welcome those that address some of the following questions:
>
> Battlegrounds
>
> •       Can we view the body as a site of war?
>
> •       Are hotel, boardrooms and offices the new battlefields?
>
> •       How can we characterize these recent arenas, protocols and 
technologies of war and counter-terrorism?
>
> •       To what extent do 9/11 and the War on Terror represent  a 
‘break’ or shift away from traditional conceptions of battleground and 
fighting?
>
> •       Are notions of absence and presence reconfigured in this new 
technological and geopolitical context, through war ‘at a distance’, 
fighting ‘by proxy’? .
>
> Bodies and death
>
> •       To what extent do we see an avoidance of death and dying in 
the visualization of war and counter-terrorism?
>
> •       Are other processes of erasure at work, such as the erasure 
of the victims of collateral damage, such as in the so-called ‘precision 
bombing’ of Iraq and Afghanistan?
>
> Technologies
>
> •       Might we view the technologies of war and of its 
visualization as technologies of erasure?
>
> •       Does this challenge the idea that modern war technologies 
allow a totalizing vision?
>
> •       What are the socio-political and cultural consequences of 
erasure for how we know war?
>
> Narratives of war:
>
> •       What kind of narratives do we actually encounter about war 
these days?
>
> •       How do forms of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking intersect 
with real-world geopolitical, social and cultural narratives?
>
> •       How are narratives of loss and trauma, causality, heroism, 
and moral imperatives expressed, complicated and interrogated by forms 
of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking?
>
> •       How does cinema negotiate a path between representation and 
politics?
>
>
> Please send proposals of 300-500 words, 5 keywords and a brief 
biographical note to Christina Hellmich <(c.hellmich /at/ reading.ac.uk)> and 
Lisa Purse <(l.v.purse /at/ reading.ac.uk)> by 1st September 2014. We hope to 
offer some travel bursaries to speakers.
>
>
> The workshop is hosted by the Department of Politics and 
International Relations and the Department of Film, Theatre and 
Television under the FAHSS Rights and Representation research theme, and 
is supported by the Centre for Ways of War and the Centre for Film 
Aesthetics and Cultures at the University of Reading.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Lisa
>
>
> Dr Lisa Purse
> Associate Professor in Film | Director of Teaching and Learning
> Theme Leader, Rights and Representation Faculty Research Theme, FAHSS
> Department of Film, Theatre & Television, Room 202, Minghella Building
> Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6BT, UK
> Tel +44 (0)118 378 4074
> Fax +44 (0)118 378 4089
> Email (l.v.purse /at/ reading.ac.uk)
> Web www.reading.ac.uk/ftt
>
> Author of Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema (EUP 2013, 
http://amzn.to/TKH2ws) and Contemporary Action Cinema (EUP 2011, 
http://amzn.to/JOOsIY)
>



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