[Commlist] Gender Equality and Sustainability: AgnèsVarda’s Sustaining Legacy

Gender Equality and Sustainability: Agnès Varda’s Sustaining Legacy
İstanbul Bilgi University (Istanbul, Turkey)
March 27-28, 2020


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İstanbul Bilgi University is launching a series of annual events 
dedicated to the intersecting themes of gender equality and 
sustainability under various academic disciplines. This year’s event 
will consider the framework of film studies.


The inspiration for this inaugural symposium comes from the tireless 
gleaner of images Agnès Varda, whose legacy of female subjectivity spans 
more than six decades, from her first film /La Pointe Courte/ (1955) to 
her final documentary /Varda par Agnès /(2019). An opening event 
launching the series will be followed by a one-day symposium to mark the 
anniversary of Varda’s passing, taking place at İstanbul Bilgi 
University March 27-28, 2020.

In addition to her career-long interest in gender equality, 
sustainability has been a resonant theme in Varda’s work. This is 
particularly true of her recent documentaries and her foray into other 
visual arts at the turn of the century, a transition that coincides with 
her shift to digital media. /The Gleaners and I/ (2000) considers the 
practice of gleaning as survival, as art, and as an approach to memory; 
further developing many of the themes in the film, Varda’s installation 
/Patatutopia/ at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 moved her perspective 
from the big screen to the gallery space. From this period until her 
death, Varda’s work deals prominently with recycling, revisiting, and 
reframing objects as well as human experience. She has described her 
essay film /The Beaches of Agnès /(2008), for example, as “an 
Unidentified Flying Object,” or a collage assembled from pieces of her 
life as expressed through various media: photographs, found footage, 
artwork, and other objects. This same spirit of invention through 
collection and recollection infuses much of her life’s work, and reveals 
not only what Varda understood about gender and the world around her, 
but also why it is crucial to study these concepts through art.

Taking Varda as its focal point, this symposium aims to open many 
potential avenues of discussion on gender equality and sustainability, 
producing a timely intervention of wide interest to many scholarly 
fields and disciplines. The symposium will conclude with a roundtable 
contextualizing, highlighting, and framing these issues under the 
heading: /Global Varda/.


_Confirmed keynote speakers_:


Sandy Flitterman-Lewis

/Rutgers University, Associate Professor of English and Film/

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Dr. Flitterman-Lewis is a pioneering scholar and teacher of feminist 
cinema whose book /To Desire Differently /(1990, 1996) is among the 
earliest studies of Varda published in English, and whose scholarship 
has since continued to advance Varda studies worldwide. She is also a 
founding co-editor of both the feminist film journal /Camera Obscura/ 
and the cultural studies journal /Discourse/.


Homay King

/Bryn Mawr College, //Chair and Professor of History of Art /

/and the Eugenia Chase Guild Chair in the Humanities/

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Dr. King is the author of /Virtual Memory /(2015), a groundbreaking 
study of digitality in contemporary art and cinema that includes Varda’s 
installations and late documentaries. Her scholarship draws on history, 
philosophy, and critical theory, and she is a current member of the 
/Camera Obscura /editorial collective.


The symposium invites papers that situate the work and legacy of Agnès 
Varda around the themes of gender equality and sustainability. Possible 
topics include, but are not limited to:


female agency in narration

recycling, revisiting, and reframing

on-screen / off-screen

the gaze, desire and intimacy

analog/digital and visceral

reality, virtuality and memory


Please submit an abstract (max 300 words), 3-5 bibliographical sources, 
3-5 keywords, and a short CV by December 1, 2019. The selected abstracts 
for the symposium will be announced by December 15, 2019.


Abstracts selected for presentation will be published online prior to 
the symposium. Full papers selected for publication will be announced 
after the symposium. The symposium language is English. All 
presentations must be delivered in English, in person by the selected 
participants. No virtual presentations will be considered, and no 
simultaneous translation will be provided.


Contact person: Ms. Nilüfer Arslan

E-mail: (nilufer.arslan /at/ bilgi.edu.tr) <mailto:(nilufer.arslan /at/ bilgi.edu.tr)>


Organizing Committee
Prof. Feride Çiçekoğlu, İstanbul Bilgi University, Director, Master 
Program in Film and Television
Prof. Aslı Tunç, İstanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Communication
Prof. Zuhal Ulusoy, İstanbul Bilgi University, Dean, Faculty of Architecture
Prof. Pınar Uyan, İstanbul Bilgi University, Dean, Faculty of Social 
Sciences and Humanities
Tolga Yalur, PhD Candidate & Teaching Fellow, George Mason University, 
Cultural Studies
Asst. Prof. Colleen Kennedy-Karpat, İ. D. Bilkent University (Ankara), 
Department of Communication and Design


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