[Commlist] Chapter CFP: Cinema and Social Justice

CFP for new edited volume: New Perspectives on Cinema and Social Justice

Following a successful year of filmmaking and research, the York St John 
University Cinema and Social Justice Project are planning an edited 
volume with Amsterdam University Press as the inaugural publication in 
their new ‘Cinema and Social Justice’ book series.

This book intends to bring together scholars from a variety of 
disciplines, backgrounds and experiences to explore the potential of 
film to engage with, and even affect, social justice and social change. 
The main goal is to demonstrate what the study of film can uncover 
regarding a wide range of pressing social justice issues. Our focus is 
on the social justice work that cinema does and the questions which 
cinema can address and answer for us on the subjects of race, gender & 
sexuality, homelessness, poverty, education, healthcare, and policing, 
in addition to ecological justice, sustainability, and ecological 
consciousness and climate anxiety.

Whilst documentary cinema has long since been read as ‘the flagship for 
a cinema of social engagement and distinctive vision’ (Nichols, 2017), 
this book seeks to engage with cinema more holistically as a site for 
social justice. Films ultimately permit us to better conceive of and 
understand things; they provide us the stories which encourage us to 
enact great change. What is of crucial importance here is the diversity 
of voices who tell these stories, as well as how and where these stories 
are disseminated to their audience.  We think that cinema can be a 
catalyst for the kind of knowledge and awareness that breeds action.

Our main goal is to demonstrate what the study of film can actually 
uncover. The desired focus of the book will be on the social justice 
work that cinema does and in particular, the questions which cinema can 
pose, and perhaps answer, on the subjects of:

•	race,
•	gender & sexuality
•	homelessness
•	poverty
•	education
•	healthcare
•	policing
•	ecological justice
•	ecological consciousness
•	climate anxiety

We are seeking chapter proposals very broadly, on any topic that deals 
with social justice in film, such as, but certainly not limited to:

•	Social Convention / rejection thereof
•	representation of social justice issues and/or themes in film
•	the context of production
•	the context of distribution
•	the make-up of the industry
•	film education and pedagogy
•	film and responsibility


Please send abstracts of 300 words and a short author biography to 
(cinemaandsocialjustice /at/ gmail.com) by Friday 1st December

The Cinema and Social Justice web pages can be found here: 
cinemasocialjustice.org

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