[Commlist] Call For Papers - Decolonising Film and Screen Studies: A Screen Worlds Open Access edited volume

*Call For Papers*

*/Decolonising Film and Screen Studies/*

*A Screen Worlds Open Access edited volume*

**

“… you cannot mobilize a movement that is only and always against; you 
must have a positive alternative, a vision of a better future that can 
motivate people to sacrifice their time and energy toward its realization.”

Obioma Nnaemeka, “Nego-feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning 
Africa’s Way”, /Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society/,//29.2 
(2003), p.364

Inspired by the RhodesMustFall movement at the University of Cape Town 
in May 2015, certain higher education institutions, individuals and 
collectives across the world have engaged in renewed, contemporary work 
to try to decolonise academia over the past four years. These movements 
are not new, and need to be historicised in relation to the long history 
of struggles for political decolonisation, complex engagement with the 
word “decolonisation” itself, and a wealth of significant theorising 
around decolonising (e.g. wa Thiong’o 1986, Tuhiwai Smith 1999). These 
contemporary movements are also not uncontested, with some arguing that 
the term “decolonisation” has provided a useful way of bringing together 
academics from different disciplines with similar agendas around 
transformation, and others arguing that the term hides a range of 
distinct activities and practices, some of which appropriate or exploit 
the term without real commitment to fostering change.

In this Open Access edited volume which forms part of the “Screen 
Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies” project, we seek to put 
the field of Film and Screen Studies into conversation with these 
contemporary, cross-disciplinary debates and discussions. Despite the 
complexities of defining “decolonisation”, particularly in relation to 
distinct contexts, we feel that this is an urgent conversation for Film 
and Screen Studies given how Eurocentric the field remains, half a 
century after its academic formalisation. While an important body of 
research has been published since the late 1980s on African cinema (e.g. 
Diawara 1992, Ukadike 1994), Black cinema (e.g. Cham and Andrade-Watkins 
1988, hooks 1996), postcolonial cinema and media (e.g. Shohat and Stam 
1994), and on de-westernising film studies (e.g. Higbee and Bâ 2012), a 
large proportion of Film and Screen Studies scholarship continues to 
ignore continental Africa, much of Asia, research in languages other 
than English, and questions of diverse cultures and worldviews. For 
example, Braudy and Cohen’s /Film Theory and Criticism /(2009), often 
used as a Film Studies textbook and now in its seventh edition, includes 
only four entries that deal with critical race theory and/or 
(post)colonialism (Diawara, Stam and Spence, Yoshimoto, Dissanayake), 
and these are placed towards the end of the book, suggesting that 
imperialism, colonialism and racism are an afterthought when it comes to 
the histories and theories of filmmaking.

As Robert Stam powerfully notes in /Film Theory: An Introduction 
/(2000), film’s historical relationship with imperialism, colonialism 
and racism has been the least studied area in Film and Screen Studies. 
This is in spite of the fact that the film medium, since its invention 
in the late 1800s, was powered by White patriarchal privilege and 
negative representations of dark-skinned peoples. Since racism has been 
a form of /visual /supremacy it makes sense to explore its origins, 
effects, and legacies through a visual medium such as film itself, which 
was invented during the Scramble for Africa. Film and Screen Studies 
thus needs to be rethought in relation to imperialism, colonialism, and 
racism. This volume calls for scholars from all disciplines and in 
diverse locations around the world to help in this ambitious task of 
re-envisioning Film and Screen Studies to make the field far more 
globally representative and inclusive of diverse and dynamic screen 
cultures and worldviews.

The fact that Film and Screen Studies has had to struggle for 
recognition as an academic discipline in its own right has led to a 
versatility and dynamism that we hope means that the field will more 
easily be able to take inspiration from, and adapt, decolonising 
debates, methods and theories from other disciplinary fields (e.g. 
Archaeology, Anthropology, Education Studies, International Relations, 
Development Studies, Gender Studies, and even Medicine and the Natural 
Sciences) while shedding light on how films and film theory can also 
help other academic fields to decolonise. We encourage contributors to 
read widely across disciplines for inspiration, and we also encourage 
contributors to foreground their own positionality and lived experience, 
as well as to reflect on the relationships between their research, 
pedagogy and/or practice (e.g. hooks 1996, Nnaemeka 2003, Mistry 2017).

Questions that might be explored (although this list is by no means 
exhaustive) include:

·What are the possibilities and problems of trying to decolonise Film 
and Screen Studies?

·What would a decolonised Film and Screen Studies programme look like? 
Which films and scholarship should be included, and how? And how might 
this vary, given that decolonising has different meanings in diverse 
local, national, regional and continental contexts?

·How can we ensure that the inclusion of films and film theory by people 
of colour in Film and Screen Studies is not tokenistic but integral to 
the re-envisioning of the whole field?

·What are the obstacles (institutional, political, economic, and 
cultural) that might inhibit fully decolonised Film and Screen Studies 
programmes and why?

·How can we embrace the diversity of languages in films in the ways that 
we research, teach and write about films? In other words, how can we 
extend our work beyond English?

·How can foregrounding our lived experiences and intersectional 
identities (cf. Walker 1983, Christian 1985, Crenshaw 1989, hooks 1994) 
change the ways we engage with Film and Screen Studies research, 
teaching, and filmmaking practice?

·How can theoretical/critical Film and Screen Studies programmes and 
practice-based Filmmaking programmes in Higher Education institutions 
help one another to decolonise?

·What can Film and Screen Studies learn from how other fields and 
disciplines have been decolonising, and vice versa?

In line with our understanding that decolonisation, in any context, is a 
deeply affective and complex process, we welcome different 
methodologies, from practical case studies to theoretically or 
empirically informed arguments to creative responses. We welcome the 
inclusion of quotations in different languages although please provide 
English translations. Please email paper proposals of 500 words, and a 
biography of 200 words, by *30 April 2020* to Professor Lindiwe Dovey at 
*(LD18 /at/ SOAS.AC.UK) <mailto:(LD18 /at/ SOAS.AC.UK)>*

Potential contributors will be notified by 30 June 2020 as to whether or 
not their proposal has been selected. For those selected, full papers 
will be due by 30 June 2021.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council 
(ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation 
programme (grant agreement No. 819236).


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