[Commlist] CFP: Animation Studios: People, Spaces, Labor

Iluminace 3/2024
Animation Studios: People, Spaces, Labor

Guest Editors: Ewa Ciszewska (University of Lodz, PL), Pavel Skopal 
(Masaryk University, CZ)

Deadline for abstracts: November 30, 2023
Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2024

In the 1980s, after a long hiatus, Film Studies began to pay attention 
to the division of labor in the film industry from a historical 
perspective. Much of this was due to the publication of The Classical 
Hollywood Cinema by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. 
At the beginning of the 21st century, American media scholar John T. 
Caldwell spurred a major revival of so-called production studies and 
research on the media industry and film studios as places of work, 
careers, and shared values and norms. The methodological impetus for 
research on film studios has been provided by the work of media and 
visual culture historian Brian Jacobson, who has put forward the 
possibilities of studying film studios as virtual and material 
environments; as symbols that take on a wide range of meanings; or as 
points at which different forms of scientific and technical knowledge, 
different technologies, resources, and materials, and groups of 
professionals of different competencies intersect. This has been 
followed up by a recent project led by British film historian Sarah 
Street Film Studios: Infrastructure, Culture, Innovation in Britain, 
France, Germany, and Italy, 1930–60.

The project of comparative research on Czechoslovak and Polish animation 
studios, led by the editors of the forthcoming issue of Iluminace, Pavel 
Skopal and Ewa Ciszewska, seeks to provide new methodological 
inspiration. The project draws on the prosopographical approach as 
applied in relation to the field theories of the French sociologist 
Pierre Bourdieu; the concept of art worlds of the American sociologist 
of art Howard S. Becker; the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour; and 
social network analysis, which allows to describe and explain the role 
of social contacts, distribution of knowledge and different types of 
capital, or the role of intermediaries in the professional environment. 
Investigating the history of two social worlds of animation film 
production operating in Central Europe allows for a new path of research 
on film history by internalizing the objectives of film production 
studies and combining them with the tools of art sociology and 
relational sociology.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
* emigration and adaptation to working standards and artistic 
conventions in a new professional
milieu
* structuring the field of animated film, analysis of the relative 
autonomy of the filmmaking
field, and heteronomous influences
* analysis of the conventions of animation production in a selected studio
* analysis of the professional and social ties of the studio staff 
working in creative and technical
professions
* description of the actor-networks involved in the process of animation 
production
* the process of professionalization of amateur filmmakers and 
adaptation to studio conditions
* spatial, architectural, and urban dimensions of animation film studios
* social or gender characteristics of animation production in the studio
* the history of education in the field of animation film, cooperation 
between educational
and production institutions, art schools, and film studios
* international cooperation and coordination between animation studios

For further inspiration, see the literature cited at: 
<https://www.iluminace.cz/index.php/en/submissions 
<https://www.iluminace.cz/index.php/en/submissions>>

Please send an abstract (250 words) and a short bio (150 words) to 
(lucie.cesalkova /at/ nfa.cz <http://nfa.cz>), (ewa.ciszewska /at/ 
uni.lodz.pl <http://uni.lodz.pl>), and (skopal /at/ phil.muni.cz 
<http://phil.muni.cz>) by November 30, 2023. The authors will be 
informed of the decision by January 31, 2024. The deadline for 
submitting the full article is April 30, 2024. No payments are required.

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