[ecrea] CFP: "Film Criticism in the Digital Age"

CFP: “Film Criticism in the Digital Age: Media, Purposes and the Status 
of the Critic”

Editors: Mattias Frey and Cecilia Sayad





The aims and status of arts and culture criticism, in general, and film 
criticism, in particular, are currently up for revision and under 
attack, according to a whole host of indicators. Numerous articles and 
academic monographs bemoan the crisis of criticism or mourn the death of 
the critic. Regular symposia and conferences dwell on the many, 
sometimes prominent film journalists made redundant at newspapers, 
magazines and other ‘old media’ in past years; Sean P. Means lists 
fifty-five American movie critics who lost their jobs between 2006 and 
2009. It is clear that the reasons for the current situation include the 
worldwide recession, the recent drop in print advertising revenues and, 
more fundamentally, the declining circulations attributable to reluctant 
consumers of print media. These developments have brought forth 
ontological—if not existential—questions about the purpose and worth of 
criticism in the age of WordPress blogospheres and a perceived 
democratization of criticism.



This edited anthology seeks to understand the current state of film 
criticism and how it has developed. It aims to examine the challenges 
that the Internet offers to the evaluation, promotion, and explanation 
of artistic works as well as digital technology’s impact on traditional 
concerns about the disposability or permanence of cultural criticism. 
The collection will furthermore contain a historical dimension that 
investigate how the status of the critic has changed in the last fifty 
years and to what extent critics can still intervene into current 
popular discourse about arts and culture.



The editors invite essays that expand, recast, and critically engage 
with some of these discussions.



Topics may include (but are not limited to):



--case studies which deliberate on the permanence or disposability of 
criticism in the digital age

--historical case studies on certain critics, critical schools, 
publications or other developments that preview or help us understand 
the current developments in film criticism

--case studies of non-Anglophone critics, critical schools, newspapers, 
magazines or other developments

--case studies which account for the persistent gendered and/or 
class-based economies that inflect contemporary film criticism

--comparative case studies with other media (theatre, visual art, music, 
or literature) or studies of critics who have appraised film through the 
lenses or in parallel to other media

--case studies which acknowledge the various forms by which film 
criticism has been transmitted (print, radio, television, online)

--comparative case studies that show how the status of the critic has—or 
has not—changed with the advent of digital technologies



Although the editors welcome broader theoretical treatments of these 
issues, they especially encourage well-researched chapters that explore 
what is at stake in film criticism’s digital age via in-depth case studies.



Please send a short abstract (250-400 words) with a brief author 
biography to Dr. Mattias Frey ((m.j.frey /at/ kent.ac.uk)) and Dr. Cecilia 
Sayad ((c.sayad /at/ kent.ac.uk)) by 1 December 2012.   The editors are 
currently in contact with university and other major presses for this 
anthology, and contributors areexpected to submit the completed essays 
by 1 September 2013.



Dr. Mattias Frey
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies
Director of Internationalisation, Faculty of Humanities
Director of Internationalisation, School of Arts
Convenor, MA Arts Criticism
Co-Director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Film and 
the Moving Image
University of Kent
Jarman School of Arts 2-26
Canterbury CT2 7UG
UK

++44 1227 827132

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