[Commlist] Call for Papers: ‘Diasporic Cinemas: Transnational Aesthetics’

Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinemas

Special Issue: ‘Diasporic Cinemas: Transnational Aesthetics’

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers>

(To be released in Dec 2026)

This Special Issue centres the question of aesthetics as the primary 
analytic lens through which diasporic cinemas are approached. Rather 
than treating diaspora and displacement primally as social condition or 
thematic concern, the issue asks how diasporic experiences are made 
perceptible through cinematic form: how image, sound, narrative 
structure, rhythm, colour, texture and performance are mobilized to 
produce distinctive modes of seeing, knowing and sensory experience.

While diasporic cinema is often discussed in relation to experiences of 
identity, belonging and displacement, this issue is attentive to how 
diaspora is aestheticized, foregrounding form and style rather than 
assuming displacement or hybridity as given conditions.

Examining diasporic cinemas through their formal and stylistic 
strategies, this Special Issue challenges critical tendencies to frame 
such films chiefly as cultural documents or sociological evidence.

Transnational aesthetics may emerge through formal strategies that 
negotiate multiple cultural, historical, regional, linguistic or 
cinematic traditions and media environments, producing hybrid or 
relational visual languages.

By foregrounding aesthetics, the issue invites scholars to examine how 
diasporic cinema produces its meanings through form, sensation and style 
– and how these aesthetic strategies reshape broader understandings of 
cinema’s transnational and global possibilities.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  *

    Temporal and spatial experimentation in diasporic storytelling (e.g.
    non-linear chronology, fragmentation, loops and temporal refusal)

  *

    Sensory approaches to diasporic cinema

  *

    Applications of existing aesthetic frameworks to individual or
    comparative film analyses

  *

    Narrative fragmentation, nonlinear structures and sensory memory

  *

    Sound: accent, music, noise and the politics of subtitling and dubbing

  *

    Landscape, home and exile as recurring visual and symbolic motifs

  *

    Comparative or cross-regional analyses of diasporic film aesthetics

  *

    Diasporic genre cinemas (horror, thriller, exploitation) and their
    reconfiguration of generic conventions

  *

    Diasporic cinema and the digital (e.g. glitch aesthetics, poor
    images, technological mediation)

  *

    Archival aesthetics (e.g. found footage, counter-archives and
    counter-memory)

  *

    Diasporic camp, kitsch and the aesthetics of excess

  *

    Colour politics and chromatic codes

  *

    Aesthetics of emotions (e.g. melancholia, nostalgia, rage, affective
    dissonance)

  *

    Diasporic cinema and critical affect (cruel optimism, Afropessimism,
    queer negativity).

Submission Guidelines

Initial inquiries and 300–400 word abstracts (with a brief biographical 
statement, including a link to the contributor’s public or institutional 
profile) should be sent to this Special Issue’s co-editors:
Associate ProfessorArezou Zalipourat (arezou.zalipour /at/ aut.ac.nz) 
<mailto:(arezou.zalipour /at/ aut.ac.nz)>,Dr James Harveyat 
(j.harvey4 /at/ herts.ac.uk) <mailto:(j.harvey4 /at/ herts.ac.uk)>, and DrGozde 
Naibogluat (g.naiboglu1 /at/ salford.ac.uk) <mailto:(g.naiboglu1 /at/ salford.ac.uk)>.

  *

    Abstracts due: 15 March 2026

  *

    Research articles: 6000–8000 words

  *

    Dialogues/interviews (2500–4000 words): practitioner and industry
    conversations.

  *

    Peer review: all completed essays will undergo double-blind peer
    review. Please note that acceptance of an abstract does not
    guarantee publication.

Publication: rolling release within Film International.


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