[ecrea] CFP Cinema of Intimacy and the Intimacy of Cinema

*Call for Papers*

*17th SERCIA conference*

*Cinema of Intimacy and/or the Intimacy of Cinema in English-Speaking Film*

The 17th annual SERCIA conference will be held at the Université de 
Bourgogne, Dijon, France, from Wednesday September 5 to Friday September 
7, 2012. It is organized by the Centre Interlangues (EA 4182). Keynote 
speakers will be Thomas Elsaesser (University of Amsterdam) and Marc 
Vernet (Université Paris 7 -- Denis Diderot).

Unlike literary studies, film studies have rarely focused directly on 
intimacy as such, as the bibliography included below suggests, and 
English-speaking cinema might itself seem an unlikely candidate for this 
topic. Most film scholars and critics have tackled the question 
indirectly, by studying, for instance, the representation of the family 
or specific genres such as the biopic in which private lives occupy 
center stage. And yet as a photographic and aural medium that enables us 
to see and hear the bodies of actors, cinema is very much based on 
intimacy, although perhaps intimacy of a different nature from the kind 
literary scholars examine when studying letters and diaries as 
expressions of a human subject's inner life. Clearly, what is at stake 
in the question of intimacy in cinema is the relationship between 
outside and inside, the outer and the inner life, the body and the self, 
the private and the public. This concerns not only the medium itself, 
but the industry as a whole. With its star system and movie tie-ins, 
including everything from Marilyn Monroe biographies to Luke Skywalker 
pyjamas, cinema undoubtedly occupies an intimate place in people's 
lives, although, television, as it is positioned at the heart of 
domestic life, might arguably appear a more intimate medium.

The 17th SERCIA conference warmly invites film scholars to tackle the 
subject of intimacy from various angles and through different 
approaches, be they aesthetic, cultural, historical or economic. 
Proposals should deal either with English-speaking cinema or films 
dealing with English-speaking countries. Comparisons with 
non-English-speaking films are, however, welcome, as well as proposals 
that mean to assess differences between films and TV series.

_List of possible topics (other suggestions will, of course, be 
considered):_

. historical, sociological, etc. approaches to the representation of the 
family, the couple, the inner life, the body;

. the question of censorship: how censorship or self-regulation has 
influenced screen representations of intimacy;

. the treatment of confession, therapy, letter- and diary-writing; the 
process of adapting the epistolary form to moving images;

. film genre studies: the biopic, the family melodrama, 
(mock-)documentaries, naturalist films; what Linda Williams calls "body 
genres," e.g. melodrama, horror and pornography;

. questions of form and aesthetics: how can inner life be expressed? The 
use of the close-up or voice-overs; acting methods; /cinéma vérité/; 
visual effects; music; diegetic cameras; digital technology;

. intimacy in foreign English-speaking films versus the dominant 
Hollywood model;

. star studies: the intimacy of stars; biographies, diaries, 
correspondence; the use of their star-image in film;

. questions of spectatorship, reception and fan studies: how do viewers 
and/or fans "use" the films and/or stars they love?

. market studies: how have studios marketed the intimate lives of stars? 
how have they sought to advertise products for use in the daily lives of 
audiences?

_Deadline_: March 31, 2012. Send abstracts (? 300 words) in English or 
French to David Roche ((mudrock /at/ neuf.fr) <mailto:(mudrock /at/ neuf.fr)>), 
Isabelle Schmitt ((Isabelle.Schmitt /at/ u-bourgogne.fr) 
<mailto:(Isabelle.Schmitt /at/ u-bourgogne.fr)>) and Melvyn Stokes 
((melvynstokes /at/ hotmail.com) <mailto:(melvynstokes /at/ hotmail.com)>).

*SERCIA is a non-profit European association that aims at promoting 
research on English-speaking cinema. You can visit the website at: 
**http://www.sercia.net <http://www.sercia.net/>**.*

*Selected bibliography*

Bahuaud, Myriam. /Dessin animé, jouet des produits dérivés/. Paris: 
l'Harmattan, 2003.

Barbas, Samantha. /Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity/. 
New York: Saint Martin's Press, 2002.

Bayon, Estelle. /Le Cinéma obscène/. Paris : L'Harmattan, 2007.

Bingham, Dennis. /Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as 
Contemporary Film Genre/. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2010.

Chion, Michel. /La Voix au cinéma/. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 1984.

---. /La Musique au cinéma/. Paris: Fayard, 1995.

Clover, Carol. J. /Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern 
Horror Film/. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1992.

Dyer, Richard. /Stars/. London: BFI, 1998 [1979].

Fuller, Kathryn H. /At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the 
Creation of Movie Fan Culture/. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2001.

Hardwood, Sarah, ed. /Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in 
1980s Hollywood Cinema/. London: Macmillan Press, 1997.

Hills, Matt. /Fan Cultures/. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Jacobs, Jason. /The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama/. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.

Kooijman, Jaap and Patricia Pisters and Wanda Strauven, eds. /Mind the 
Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser/. Amsterdam: 
Amsterdam UP, 2008.

Lewis, Lisa A. /The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media/. 
London and New York: Routledge, 1992.

MacDougall, David. /The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the 
Senses/. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005.

Palmer, Tim. /Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema/. 
Middleton, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2011.

Peacock, Steven. /Hollywood and Intimacy: Style, Moments, Magnificence/. 
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Rueschmann, Eva. /Sisters on Screen: Siblings in Contemporary Cinema/. 
Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2000.

Ruoff, Jeffrey Kevin. /An American Family: A Televised Life/. 
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.

Schantz, Ned. /Gossip, Letters, Phones: The Scandal of Female Networks 
in Film and Literature/. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.

Staiger, Janet. /Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception/. 
New York and London: New York UP, 2000.

Strasberg, Lee. /The Lee Strasberg Notes/. Ed. Lola Cohen. London and 
New York: Routledge, 2010.

Vernet, Marc. /Figures de l'absence : De l'invisible au cinéma/. Paris: 
Cahiers du Cinéma -- Éditions de l'Étoile, 1998.

Williams, Linda./ Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the 
Visible/./"/ Berkeley and L.A.: U of California P, 1999 [1989].