[Commlist] CFP: O Beauty, Where Art Thou? In Search of the Beautiful in Film (Conference)

We would like to remind you of the upcoming deadline for submissions for 
the conference: 1 September 2026.

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

O Beauty, Where Art Thou?
In Search of the Beautiful in Film

1-3 April 2027
University of Groningen (The Netherlands)

Abstract submission deadline: 1 September 2026

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Rosalind Galt (King’s College London)
Adrian Martin (Independent Scholar, Spain)
Lúcia Nagib (University of Reading)
Jordan Schonig (UC Santa Barbara)

Beauty is lacking in film studies. While early film theorists still had 
a keen eye for it, beauty mostly disappeared from film critical analyses 
in subsequent decades. And even though occasional advances have been 
made in recent years, there is still no sustained investigation of this 
major aesthetic phenomenon. This is astonishing given the importance 
beauty has played in the history of cinema. Over the last decades widely 
admired directors—from Todd Haynes, Wong Kar-wai, Céline Sciamma, and 
Barry Jenkins to Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Paolo Sorrentino, Shirin Neshat and 
Terrence Malick—have continued the long-standing exploration of beauty’s 
aesthetic and affective force.

But the neglect of beauty is striking also because several recent 
developments in film studies and beyond have made it ripe for 
reinvigoration. First, the last decades have witnessed the rise in 
prominence of filmic modes favoring what is key in many definitions of 
beauty: contemplation. What has been dubbed ‘slow cinema,’ ‘eco-cinema,’ 
and ‘meditative film’ is not necessarily beautiful, but in the case of 
directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, James Benning, Sharon 
Lockhart, or Peter Hutton beauty—and specifically natural beauty—becomes 
an integral part of what their films are about. Second, not only have 
aesthetic categories such as the pretty, the weird, the eerie, the 
wondrous or the sublime received in-creased attention in film studies, 
but film scholarship has witnessed a striking return of aesthetics and 
form more generally. Important monographs have rediscovered 
philosophical aesthetics and, coming from literary studies, New 
Formalism has reached the study of the moving image. Third, over the 
last two decades, we have seen a transdisciplinary rediscovery of beauty 
in the humanities ranging from philosophical aesthetics and literary 
studies to art history. This can be noticed also among famous Black 
intellectuals such as Zadie Smith, Achille Mbembe, Saidiya Hartman, 
Christina Sharpe, and Robert Gooding-Williams. These interventions have 
underscored that a blanket distrust of beauty in the arts is 
unwarranted. Not least, we can also observe a strong interest in beauty 
among scholars in quantitative disciplines such as empirical aesthetics, 
psychology of art, and neuroaesthetics, even though films have yet to 
play a decisive role in their studies.

This conference tries to make amends by taking a close look at beauty in 
film.

Of course, the concept is not easy to pin down. Some philosophers 
therefore call it an ambiguous concept. On the one hand, it is 
understood fairly widely as a synonym for ‘aesthetic value,’ ‘aesthetic 
liking,’ or ‘aesthetic pleasure.’ On the other hand, it designates 
something more specific: an aesthetic category comparable to—but 
ultimately different from—the pretty, the sublime, the cute, kitsch etc. 
We are decidedly interested in beauty narrowly defined and aim to avoid 
broad identifications of beauty with everything that gives rise to 
aesthetic pleasure.

Another aim of the conference is to highlight the potentially 
progressive side of cinematic beauty: Are there perhaps more far-ranging 
gains connected to the experience of cinematic beauty beyond the 
pleasurable feeling it evokes? Might it even have societal impact, 
political effects, existential functions, and result in well-being and 
contribute to prosociality? Restoring a more affirmative view on this 
long-ignored phenomenon may be appropriate in our historical moment of 
looming climate catastrophe, political upheavals, and wars in Europe and 
be-yond—developments experienced by many as a depressing stream of 
apocalyptic scenarios.

However, this is certainly not to say that we reject critical voices 
wary of the potentially normative, elitist, or sexist implications of 
beauty. We therefore also invite postcolonial, feminist and other 
critical-theory approaches to cinematic beauty.

Ultimately, we are interested in various takes, be they historical, 
theoretical, philosophical, or empirical. Papers may address but are not 
restricted to the following topics:

 > Beauty in film theory: What traces of beauty can we find in the 
history of film studies, from early film theory to contemporary film 
philosophy?
 > Beauty and its absence: What reasons drove film scholars to put a 
blind eye on beauty?
 > Beauty and its cognate concepts: How does beauty relate to 
photogénie, cinephilia, poetic cinema etc.?
 > Beauty and its types: How do natural beauty, human beauty, moral 
beauty etc. manifest themselves in film and how does the filmic medium 
shape them?
 > Beauty and its varieties: What cultural or ethical variations of 
beauty have left their traces in the history of global cinema?
 > Beauty and its opposites: What distinguishes a beautiful film from a 
pretty, cute, sublime, ugly, or kitschy one?
 > Beauty and its effects: What positive (or negative) ethical, 
political, existential, or well-being effects could beauty have on 
spectators?
 > Beauty and specific modes of filmmaking: Where do we find beauty in 
documentary film, avant-garde/experimental film, home movies, music 
videos etc.?
 > Beauty and its auteurs: Which filmmakers have relied on beauty and 
to what end?
 > Beauty and its production: What do filmmakers do to evoke 
experiences of beauty?
 > Beauty and aesthetic evaluation: How does film criticism account for 
beauty and how does it relate to evaluative criteria of film?

Please send a short bio of 250 words and an abstract of 400-500 words 
with 5 key bibliographical sources to (cinematic.beauty /at/ rug.nl) 
<mailto:(cinematic.beauty /at/ rug.nl)>.
Abstract submission deadline: 1 September 2026.
Acceptance notifications will be sent out by the end of September 2026.

Please note the conference will be held in person not hybrid format. 
Travel and accommodation expenses are to be covered by the participants. 
Selected papers will be published in an edited volume.

This conference is organized by Julian Hanich, Jakob Boer and Lara 
Perski from the research project Cinematic Beauty: Exploring the 
Experience of a Major Aesthetic Phenome-non, located at the University 
of Groningen and funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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