[ecrea] CFP: Fantasy/Animation: A Conference on Media, Medium and Genre

Fantasy/Animation: A Conference on Media, Medium and Genre

Friday 4th September 2015, King’s College London, Strand Campus
Deadline for abstracts: Friday 29th May 2015

Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor Paul Wells (Loughborough University), Dr James Walters (University of Birmingham)
	
The American Film Institute defines the Hollywood fantasy film as “a genre where live-action characters inhabit imagined settings and/or experience situations that transcend the rules of the natural world”. Despite this broad definition, it would seem that animation occupies an unavoidable position in the development of fantasy cinema, whether it be through the enduring popularity of Disney’s fairy tale adaptations such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) or Cinderella (1952), or else in the ubiquitous use of digital animation across contemporary franchises such as The Chronicles of Narnia (2005-10) or The Hobbit (2012-14). Animation has continued to play an important role in defining our collective expectations and experiences of fantasy cinema, just as fantasy has often served as an inspiration throughout the rich legacy of popular animation.

This conference seeks to interrogate the interrelationship and intersection between animation and fantasy. Analysing the fluency and connection between these two terms, this event aims to examine some common debates that underpin the scholarship of these dual fields of research. Are “fantasy” and “animation” genres in their own right, or are they instead impulses found across a variety of cinematic forms and modes? Does animation lend itself to fantasy given its specific properties or vice versa, and what does this then tell us about the fundamental nature of these two mediums or medias? This conference will address such questions in order to illuminate two fields of research which, despite their distinctness, have significant possibilities for overlap.

Potential speakers are free to take either topic of “fantasy” or “animation” as their dominant concern. However, proposals are especially welcome that seek to place the two concepts in dialogue with one another. Suggested topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

-	Animation theory and its potential application to fantasy cinema
-	Scholarship on fantasy (cinema, television, literature) and its inclusion/exclusion of animation
-	Specific case studies of fantasy and/or animated films and television
-	Historical perspectives on individual studios, producers and directors in different national/transnational contexts (Walt Disney, Studio Ghibli, Ray Harryhausen, Ralph Bakshi)
-	Proto-animation and cinema’s early pioneers (Eadweard Muybridge, Georges Méliès, Winsor McCay)
-	Questions of realism, indexicality and ontology in relation to fantasy and/or animation
-	Issues of genre, theory and classification in relation to animation and/or fantasy
-	Psychological/psychoanalytic/philosophical perspectives on “fantasy/phantasy” (Freud, Lacan, Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty)
-	Fantasy/animation and their mutual associations with childishness and childhood
-	Live-action/animation hybrids and questions of mixed media
-	“Un-orthodox” forms of animation (puppetry, stop-motion, experimental, avant-garde)
-	Sub-genres of literary fantasy (High Fantasy, Fairy tales, Magical Realism) and ideas of adaptation

Please send an abstract (max. 300 words) detailing your proposal for a 20 minute paper, and a brief biographical note, to the following address:(fantasyanimation2015 /at/ gmail.com). Pre-constituted panel submissions will also be considered.

Conference organisers: Dr Christopher Holliday (King’s College London) and Alexander Sergeant (King’s College London)


---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------