[Commlist] CFP: Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion. Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

**

*/Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion./*

*/Narratives of Plural Italy, between Imaginary and Diversity Politics/*//

XXVI International Conference of Film Studies

//

Rome, May 6-8, 2021

Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing Arts - 
University of Roma Tre

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Áine O’Healy (Loyola Marymount University), Igiaba Scego (writer and 
journalist),

Jennifer Smith (Head of Inclusion, BFI)

The global pandemic crisis triggered by COVID-19, on the threshold of 
2020, also had a tremendous impact on creative industries, whose supply 
chains are kept on track, in Italy as elsewhere, thanks to mostly 
intermittent workers, with a weak social protection. While claiming an 
urgent recovery plan for the whole sector, we stand for a widening and 
broader diversity in the gamut of interested parties. In this way, it 
would be possible to respond to a global demand for participation, 
coming from groups that are scarcely present in senior positions and are 
associated with a strongly limited narrative.  XXVI International 
Conference of Film Studies /Migrations, Citizenships, Inclusion /aims to 
meet this demand and return it in terms of analysis and operating proposals.

We solicit contributions addressing the specificities of “made in Italy” 
between film and media, with reference to migration, citizenship and 
inclusion. We would like to expand this conversation, in order to: a) 
include, using a common framework, artistic platforms, and diversity 
politics, and to b) confront them with modeling audio/visual products 
and experiences from other countries, in Europe and in the global arena.

The double scope of this conference, as an ideal closure of the 
interdisciplinary project /Imaginaries of Global Migration: Identity, 
Citizenship, Interculturality /(Call for Ideas 2019-21), is to explore 
the order of narratives in film and media on migrations, citizenship and 
transculturality, and the space of viability for talents with a migrant 
background in Italian creative industries.

Narratives on and from migrant and post-migrant subjects in film and 
media represent a consolidated global field of practices and discourses, 
offer a wide range of perspectives, address the diasporic circuits 
sometimes exploited by creatives, or scrutinize the subtexts these 
audio/visual productions convey across the border on the «color of the 
nation».

The study of audio/visual narratives on migration, citizenship and 
transculturality spread in the early 2000s, starting from commentaries 
that emerged in the contexts of militant criticism and Italian Studies 
and produced over the years mostly first mappings and case studies in 
film and media scholarship. Only recently, in contributions focused on 
transcultural encounter and oriented to cultural and postcolonial 
studies, we have started to find analyses of (not only) audio/visual 
narratives, recovering the traces of a minoritizing, and even 
racializing, long-lasting imagery.

Meanwhile, in contributions more directly associated to the Film and 
Media Studies scholarship, we have had a remarkable amount of 
comparative mappings, on a European scale, in which audio/visual 
practices on migrations, from and to Italy, and of transcultural 
encounter, were confronted with experiences made in countries 
experiencing a far more developed conversation on these issues, such as 
United Kingdom and France.

Far more episodic were overviews concerning creatives with migrant 
backgrounds aimed to: a) profile authors/authoresses in their artistic 
career; b) analyze how they position themselves in relation to main 
productive or artistic trends on a local, European or global scale; c) 
investigate weaknesses, oppositions and gaps limiting the level of 
inclusion in Italian creative industries.

We experience a relative stagnation in film and media narratives on 
migrations, citizenship and transculturality, associated mostly with 
uplifting stories of first arrival and reception. This stagnaion appears 
conditioned by a political elite strongly polarized on these issues, as 
well as by a news system that is oriented to be a sounding board for the 
discontent of the social media audience rather than a body that gives 
tools for reading the present. In addition, the context of UE-based and 
local migration politics justify and support proactively securitarian, 
sovereignist and necropolitic logics that have transformed the 
Mediterranean Sea into the most tragic liquid frontier along the global 
arena.

In response to this rather daunting scenario, made even more gloomy 
during the global pandemic, here and there we can see timid signs of 
liveliness and openness toward claiming more inclusive narratives, and a 
niche for stories more in tune with the real country, especially in 
/cinéma du réel /production, in TV series and formats for the web.

In civil society and movements, we can see an emerging activism among 
young generations, in immigrant organizations, and grassroot unions 
fighting for new rights and protections. We can feel it as well: a 
claiming of formal and symbolic citizenship that has been postponed far 
too long; a transfeminist protagonism that knows no bounds; a diffused 
associationism requiring new spaces in representation and agency for 
LGBT*QIA+ subjectivities, for persons with disabilities, and for 
communities subject to discrimination only for being Roma, Sinti and 
Travellers; to fight for large layers of the population watching their 
fundamental rights be undermined, from healthcare to education.

On the other hand, there has been a hive of initiatives testifying – 
from the persons concerned along with critics – about the emergence of a 
new growing global awareness related to issues of privilege and 
inequality in creative industries. Consider the activism of French 
actresses of African descent (see the book /Noire n’est pas mon 
métier/), the Diversity Standards of British Film Institute, the more 
and more frequent experiences of non-traditional casting, or the recent 
Representation and Inclusion Standards adopted by Academy Awards in 
September 2020. It’s time for decision makers in Italian cultural 
politics to to affirm the global sensibility and confront these 
questions of inequality of opportunity, rather than condoning a stagnant 
state of things.

We are seeking a variety of applications to present on the themes of the 
conference that may include:

·_Modes of Representation_: mainstream narratives reinforcing the 
dichotomy Us vs. Others and a stagnant imaginary concerning Italianness 
and Europeanness, and narratives that, on the contrary, acting on a 
platform of more or less explicit /artivism/, try to subvert the 
dominant discursive order around migration, citizenship and 
transculturality;

·_Esthetic Forms and New Languages_: audio/visual live and reproduced 
expressive practices, mostly associated to pseudo-naturalistic, 
sensationalist or parodic registers, prevailing in narratives concerning 
migration, citizenship and transculturality, and those experiences that, 
emerging among the interstitial spaces of the market, work to change the 
horizon of artistic and exhibiting practices;

·_Documentary Narratives_: modes of representation concerning migrants 
and foreign-born Italians in /cinéma du reel/, as seen between cultural 
stereotypes and attempts at dialogue, approaches that reflect the 
widespread polarization around the issues of transculturality and 
experiences promoting instead social interaction, the participatory use 
of media, and self-representation;

·_Made in Italy, Transnationalism, Anti/models_: traditions, modeling 
experiences and case studies revealing the presence of interrelations 
and exchange, cultural specificities and resistances, development 
perspectives that are useful to compare on a Europe-wide and global scale;

·_Authors/Authoresses and Performers_: profiles of migrant and 
post-migrant authorship and actoriality/stardom that left their mark on 
the audio/visual Italian scene, investigated – for example – in their 
relations with professional training places and esthetic and productive 
reference modes; their most recognizable marks, on productive, symbolic 
and stylistic plans; the plurality of their modes of positioning in 
terms of identity, culture and politics;

·_Degree of Multilingualism_: the existing practices of verbal 
communication displayed in audio/visual texts that highlight the 
existence of a multilayered multilingualism, envisioning a hiatus 
between the convoluted language of Italian laws and regulations, the 
mixture of dialects and idiolects associated to a defined area and the 
parental language and norms, which then trigger a plurality of dynamics 
of affiliation in migrant and post-migrant subjectivities;

·_Diversity Politics in Creative Industries_: the existing national 
initiatives in governance, the management of broadcasting public 
service, and the self-regulation of the private sector that promotes 
diversity politics both on and off screen, as well as the programs to 
support the creativity of persons of foreign origins, which sometimes 
rely on monitoring aimed at checking the degree of pluralism and 
inclusion in creative industries and the impact of the initiatives promoted;

·_Bad Practices still in use in Italian film and media_: frequent 
instances of blackface in popular TV shows and films; the routine 
casting of foreign-born white Italians (or professional actors/actresses 
imported from abroad) in the role of migrants and post-migrants; a 
failure to use creatives of foreign origin when telling stories 
concerning migration, citizenship and transculturality; the tendency to 
ask creatives with a migrant background to deal only and exclusively of 
migration; the habit of relegating performers of foreign or «mixed» 
origins in secondary and ethnically connoted roles; the relations 
existing between the strong survival of those bad practices and the 
periodic rekindling of the crusade against a presumed «political correct 
dictatorship» or «cancel culture».

Please send your 300-350 words abstracts for individual proposals with 
3-5 keywords, a short biography, and your contacts to Prof. Leonardo De 
Franceschi and prof. Ivelise Perniola at (romatreconf2021 /at/ uniroma3.it) 
<mailto:(romatreconf2021 /at/ uniroma3.it)> by the *31^st of March, 2021*.

The acceptance of proposals will be confirmed by the 12^th of April, 2021.

Fee for applicants attending: 20 euros.

We welcome 20-minute papers. The languages of the conference are English 
and Italian.

Organization: Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing 
Arts - University of Roma Tre

Direction: Leonardo De Franceschi, Ivelise Perniola

Scientific Committee: Enrico Carocci, Ilaria A. De Pascalis, Marco M. 
Gazzano, Stefania Parigi, Marta Perrotta, Veronica Pravadelli, Christian 
Uva, Vito Zagarrio.

Organizing Committee: Emiliano Aiello, Christian Carmosino, Francesco 
D’Asero, Leonardo Magnante, Giacomo Ravesi, Elio Ugenti, Mario Vai.



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