[Commlist] CFP: 25 Years of The Big Lebowski

    Approaching Deadline: 25 Years of The Big Lebowski; Abstracts due by
    31 January

                 Call for Abstracts:

               Ethan and Joel Coen’s The Big Lebowski (1998) is lauded
    as the first cult film of the internet age, due in no small part to
    the role played by online communities in its gradual rise to
    popularity.  It sees a travelling festival dedicated to it, The
    Lebowski Fest, celebrated annually across various cities in the USA
    and the UK since 2002 and 2008 respectively. Over years, the film’s
    protagonist has garnered such adoration that it led to the formation
    of a contemporary religion, Dudeism, in 2005, with a community of
    more than 600,000 members worldwide ordained through its simple
    online procedure. After being trashed initially, the film has gone
    on to garner critical acclaim and was even added to the USA's
    Library of Congress’ National Treasury in 2014. It has also drawn a
    fair share of scholarly attention with time in critical anthologies
    such as The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies (2009), The Big Lebowski
    and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom (2012),
    and Fan Phenomena: The Big Lebowski (2014). However, these represent
    only a fraction of the vast body of literature on the film, with
    numerous (aca)fan books, fan theories, and online forums
    passionately dissecting it as well. The film seems to have sustained
    its cultural relevance over the years — as evidenced by a Super Bowl
    commercial featuring its protagonist as well as popular films like
    Avengers: Endgame referencing it, in 2019, and a spinoff titled The
    Jesus Rolls releasing in 2020. As recently as August 2021, a reddit
    user posited that the underlying message of The Big Lebowski is more
    relevant now than it has ever been.

                 As the 25th anniversary of its release draws closer, we
    look to revisit The Big Lebowski to facilitate and foster further
    scholarly dialogue on this film which seems well on its way to
    becoming a cultural artefact. For this, we seek original
    contributions of qualitative research that offer fresh perspectives
    on The Big Lebowski from a myriad of vantage points and analytical
    frameworks. Prospective strands of discussion include but are not
    limited to:

                     Film theory and The Big Lebowski
                     The filmography of the Coen brothers
                     The Big Lebowski’s b(l)ending of conventional genre
    norms
                     Cyberculture and The Big Lebowski
                     Fan(dom) studies and The Big Lebowski
                     The Lebowski lexicon
                     Philosophical readings of The Big Lebowski
                     Comparative studies of The Big Lebowski
                     The Big Lebowski in and as adaptation
                     Gender in The Big Lebowski
                     Queer aesthetics in The Big Lebowski
                     Reading The Big Lebowski through critical race theory
                     The Big Lebowski beyond the anglophone world

               We welcome interested contributors to submit Abstracts of
    around 250 words along with a bio-note of no more than 150 words as
    a single MS Word (.doc or .docx) file to
    (cinej25yearsoflebowski /at/ gmail.com)
    <mailto:(cinej25yearsoflebowski /at/ gmail.com)> by 31 January 2022.
    Authors of selected Abstracts will be invited to contribute full
    papers for a Special Section/Issue of the University of Pittsburgh's
    CINEJ Cinema Journal to be published around the 25th anniversary of
    The Big Lebowski’s release. CINEJ Cinema Journal is an open-access
    journal that is free for readers to access, and does not levy any
    Article Processing Charges on authors.



                 Key Dates:

                     Abstract (250 words) Deadline: 31 January 2022
                     Intimation of Selection: 1 March 2022
                     Full paper (5,000-7,000 words) Deadline: 1 July 2022
                     Publication: Early 2023



                 Guest Editors:

                     Elloit Cardozo, independent scholar, Mumbai, India
                     Dr. Sachin Labade, Associate Professor of English,
    University of Mumbai, India

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