[ecrea] CFP: Transnationalism and Imperialism: New Perspectives on the Western

Transnationalism and Imperialism: New Perspectives on the Western

A conference organized by EMMA (Études Montpelliéraines du Monde 
Anglophone), CAS (Cultures Anglo-Saxonnes) and CORPUS (Conflits, 
Représentations et Dialogues dans le Monde Anglo-Saxon)

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
Site Saint Charles
November 15-16, 2018

Keynote speakers: Matthew Carter (Manchester Metropolitan University) 
and Andrew Patrick Nelson (Montana State University)

This conference is a follow-up to a symposium entitled “Politics of the 
Western: a Revisionist Genre” organized by Hervé Mayer (EMMA EA741) at 
Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 on December 8, 2017. The aim of 
this conference is to question the film genre of the Western as being 
essentially American by focusing on the transnational dimension of 
Western narratives and images, as well as the circulation, reception, 
and production of Westerns outside the United States.

The genre has been widely read within the confines of a national culture 
and cinema in the U.S. André Bazin and Jean-Louis Rieupeyrout (1953) 
famously labeled the Western “the American cinema par excellence,” and 
film genre studies since have consistently resorted to a 
“sociohistorical analysis” to read the genre as the cinematic expression 
of an American identity (Le Bris 2012). In recent film studies, the 
Western genre is still widely explored, understood, and constructed as 
an American genre despite overwhelming evidence of foreign production 
and global circulation since the invention of cinema. In doing so, 
studies of the Western strengthen the construction of an American 
exception that the genre—and the myth of the West it is grounded 
in—itself promoted. In order to emancipate studies of the Western from 
discourses of American exceptionalism, this conference proposes to 
connect film genre studies with the recent field of transnational 
cinema. Transnational cinema generally refers to films that cross 
national borders, as stories, productions, and sometimes both. But the 
concept of transnationalism can be interpreted more widely as a 
repositioning of film studies, in which the “study of national cinemas 
must then transform into transnational film studies” (Lu 1997, emphasis 
in original). This “critical transnationalism” approaches film from the 
viewpoint of international networks of production and reception rather 
than from national film traditions, exploring the complex economic, 
political, and cultural negotiations between transnational and national 
along with questions of “postcoloniality, politics and power” (Higbee 
and Lim 2010).

Several scholars have pointed out the blind spot of transnationalism in 
the study of the Western and started to explore the genre from more 
de-centered perspectives. In a 2001 article on Cormac McCarthy, Susan 
Kollin called for researchers to abandon the idea of the Western as a 
“quintessential American form” and invited them instead to “recognize 
that its sensibilities have been shaped by a larger history of 
imperialism”. In their respective contributions to Zoos humains(2011), 
Pascal Blanchard, Eric Deroo and Eric Ames underline the ideological 
familiarity between Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and other spectacles 
of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century. In his study of French 
colonial cinema, Abdelkader Benali (1998) notices that “several levels 
of comparison can be established between the French colonial cinema and 
the American Western”, referencing narrative structure, themes, dramatic 
content, or what he calls the “ethno-anthropological dimension” of those 
genres. Expanding on ideas put forth by Richard Slotkin (1992) and later 
by Stanley Corkin (2004), James Chapman and Nicholas Cull, in the first 
chapter of Projecting Empire (2009) which focuses on the British and 
American co-productions of empire films in the 1930s, mention the 
“common ground” of Western and empire films, again citing narrative 
structures (expansion, taming of the frontier, clash of civilization and 
savagery). These various arguments seem to invite the following 
hypothesis: that the Western is not so much an American exception, but 
rather the American expression of a transnational ideology and culture 
of imperialism. That only a limited percentage of American Westerns 
feature the Indian wars and territorial conquest does not change the 
fact that the entire genre explores racial and gender hierarchies, as 
well as issues of progress and violence inherited from, and shaped by, a 
history of imperialism. The very category of the "Western" as a genre 
can therefore also be questioned as other labels (empire cinema or 
cinema of exploration) may better capture the common features of 
imperial cinemas beyond national borders.

Along with the ideological and narrative similarities between the 
American Western and other spectacles of imperialism, another largely 
unexplored field of study is that of the circulation and reception of 
Westerns outside the United States. Quantitative studies on the 
exportation of American Westerns abroad are needed to specify the vague 
estimates presently available, as well as studies on the marketing 
strategies developed by studios to sell their products outside the 
United States. One recent step to answer this question is Russell 
Meuff’s 2013 study of the target marketing of John Wayne films in 1950s 
France. If Hollywood’s construction of foreign markets is important to 
understand how producers conceived the appeal of their products beyond 
national borders, the reception of American Westerns abroad is as 
important to understand how those products interacted with, and 
contributed to shape, national or local cultures. Talking about Cheyenne 
Autumn in a 1967 interview with Peter Bogdanovich, John Ford mentioned 
the interest of European audiences for the Indian as one of the reasons 
for making the film. This interest needs to be verified. More 
specifically, it begs the question: to what extent does/did the American 
Western crystallize national or local issues of imperialism? One 
hypothesis that could be addressed is that American Westerns acted as a 
foil to audiences of imperial nations: it represented both a foreignness 
that allowed for dissociating criticism (Americans murdered the 
“Indian”) and a familiarity that was exhilarating (the white man’s 
epic), the level of historical dissociation being proportionate to the 
guiltless enjoyment of an imperial story. Some scholars point to more 
complex power relations at work in the circulation and reception of 
American Westerns. One example is Peter Bloom’s contribution to 
Westerns: Films Through History (2001), in which the author explores how 
the reception of populist American Westerns in 1930s Algeria affected 
French rule in the colony. Such reception studies can shed new light on 
the issue of American cultural imperialism.

In addition to the circulation and reception of American Westerns 
abroad, one last area of transnational discussion of the Western is that 
of foreign productions. Of the three areas of study mapped out for this 
conference, this is the most well-known and explored. Studies of 
non-American westerns have developed since the 1980s (Frayling 1981), 
focusing predominantly on Italian Westerns that were successful in the 
U.S. and worldwide (those of Sergio Leone and, to a lesser extent, 
Sergio Corbucci), but there remains much work to consider the diversity 
and complexity of Western productions outside the U.S., notably by 
considering how the genre’s imperialist thrust—the economic conquest of 
space and celebration of hard masculinity at the expense of a racial 
other—has been used to reflect on national and international concerns. 
Attention to the transfer of Western motifs and figures (costumes, color 
schemes, songs and music, the use of low-angle shots and narrative 
montage to emphasize heroic feats, the advance of civilization, etc.) to 
address national concerns and sometimes critique imperialist ideologies 
would be welcome. A first step in that direction was taken with the 
recent publications of International Westerns (Miller 2013) and Critical 
Perspectives on the Western(Broughton 2016), which break new grounds in 
focusing on reinterpretations of the Western by foreign industries such 
as Hungary, Brazil, Bangladesh, and South Africa. International Westerns 
is especially noteworthy for its attempt to fill in the gap of a 
“book-length survey of the breadth of the international Westerns” [xvi], 
but, while the book crosses the borders of the American Western, it 
reestablishes those borders in its treatment of foreign Westerns as 
local rewritings of the genre within national cinematic traditions. The 
extent to which non-American Westerns reinstate the idea of an 
exceptionally American genre even as they appropriate the genre remains 
to be assessed.

The following venues of investigation can be addressed:

=>  The American Western as the expression of a transnational culture of 
imperialism:
+ comparative studies of the Frontier/Western myth and other colonial or 
imperial narratives;
+ transnational origins of Frontier/Western mythology;
+ comparative studies of the American Western and other colonial or 
imperial cinemas;
+ interactions of the American Western with other national cultures 
(appropriation, acculturation, redefinitions);
+ discussion of the national label "Western" as opposed to transnational 
genre categories such as empire cinema or cinema of exploration.

=>  The American Western abroad: circulation and reception:
+ economic, cultural, political implications; American marketing 
strategies abroad;
+ the reception of American Westerns in foreign countries and the degree 
to which they resonate with national cultures of imperialism.

=>  The non-American Western: the production of Westerns abroad:
+ case studies of non-American English-language productions (Australia, 
Canada, Italy, etc.);
+ comparative studies of American Westerns and non-English-language 
productions (Argentina, Brazil, German, French, Manchuria, etc.).

=>  Transnational studies of the Western: definitions, theory, practices:
+ Surveys of national academic corpuses on the Western;
+ Comparative studies of national academic corpuses.

Proposals in English (350 words including a short bio and bibliography) 
must be sent to Marianne Kac-Vergne 
((mariannekac /at/ yahoo.fr)<mailto:(mariannekac /at/ yahoo.fr)>), Hervé Mayer 
((hervmayer /at/ gmail.com)<mailto:(hervmayer /at/ gmail.com)>) and David Roche 
((mudrockca /at/ gmail.com)<mailto:(mudrockca /at/ gmail.com)>) by March 31, 2018. 
They will be reviewed by the scientific committee. Notification of 
acceptation will be sent to participants by May 1, 2018.

Organizing Committee: Marianne Kac-Vergne (CORPUS EA4295), Hervé Mayer 
(EMMA EA741) and David Roche (CAS EA801)

Scientific Committee: Mathilde Arrivé, Jean-François Baillon, Zachary 
Baqué, Lee Broughton, Matthew Carter, Christophe Chambost, Claude 
Chastagner, Florent Christol, Claire Dutriaux, Sarah Hatchuel, Gilles 
Menegaldo, Monica Michlin, Andrew Patrick Nelson, Anne-Marie 
Paquet-Deyris, Peter Stanfield, Vincent Souladié, Clémentine Tholas-Disset

Selective Bibliography
Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999

Benali, Abdelkader. Le cinéma colonial au Maghreb : l’imaginaire en 
trompe-l’œil. Paris: Cerf, 1998.

Blanchard, Pascal et al. (eds.). Zoos humains et exhibitions coloniales 
: 150 ans d’inventions de l’Autre. Paris: La Découverte, 2011.

Bloom, Peter J. “Beyond the Western Frontier: Reappropriations of the 
‘Good Bad-man’ in France, the French Colonies, and Contemporary 
Algeria.” Ed. Westerns: Films through History. Ed. Janet Walker. New 
York: Routledge, 2001, 197-218.
Bogdanovich, Peter. John Ford. London: Studio Vista, 1967.
Broughton, Lee (ed.). Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A 
Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 
2016.
Campbell, Neil. Post-Westerns: Cinema, Region, West. Lincoln: University 
of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Carter, Matthew. Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood’s 
Frontier Narrative. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

Chapman, James and Nicholas John Cull. Projecting Empire: Imperialism 
and Popular Cinema. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
Corkin, Stanley. Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History. 
Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004.
Durovicová Nataša and Kathleen E. Newman. World Cinemas, Transnational 
Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from 
Karl May to Sergio Leone. New York: I.B. Tauris, 1981.
Higbee, Will and Song Hwee Lim. “Concepts of transnational cinema: 
towards a critical transnationalism in film studies”. Transnational 
Cinemas 1.1 (2010): 7-21.
Kollin, Susan. “Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy 
and the Contemporary Western.” Contemporary Literature 42.3 (2001): 557-88.

Landi, Marcia. British Genres: Cinema and Society (1930-1960). 
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Le Bris, Louis. Le Western : grandeur ou décadence d’un mythe ? Paris: 
l’Harmattan, 2012.

Lottini, Irene. “When Buffalo Bill Crossed the Ocean: Native American 
Scenes in Early Twentieth Century European Culture.” European Journal of 
American Culture 31.3 (Oct 2012): 187-203.
Lu Sheldon Hsiao-peng. Transnational Chinese Cinema: Identity 
Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu, HA: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.

Meeuf, Russell. John Wayne’s World: Transnational Masculinity in the 
Fifties. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2013.
Miller, Cynthia J., and A. Bowdoin Van Riper (eds.). International 
Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2014.

Nelson, Andrew Patrick (ed.), Contemporary Westerns: Film and Television 
since 1990. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2013.

Rieupeyrout, Jean-Louis. Le Western ou Le cinéma américain par 
excellence. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1953.
Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 
Twentieth-Century America. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1998 [1992].
Hervé Mayer
Maître de conférences en civilisation américaine
Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3
https://univ-montp3.academia.edu/Herv%C3%A9Mayer/<http://u-paris10.academia.edu/Herv%C3%A9Mayer>


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