[ecrea] CFP SERCIA Masculine/ Feminine: Gender in English-Language Cinema and Television

Call for Papers

21st SERCIA Conference
University of Artois, Arras, France
3-5 September 2015

Masculine/ Feminine:
Gender in English-Language Cinema and Television

The 21st SERCIA conference will be held at the University of Artois, in 
Arras, France, from September 3 to September 5, 2015. It is organized 
jointly by the research centers Textes et Cultures at the University of 
Artois and CORPUS at the University of Picardie Jules Verne.
SERCIA (Société d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Cinéma Anglophone) is a 
French organization encouraging teaching and research in 
English-speaking cinema. It brings together film scholars from all over 
the world at its annual conference and publishes selected articles from 
each conference in themed books and in its electronic peer-reviewed 
journal, Film Journal (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/filmjournal).

Masculinity, femininity, and the relations between men and women are 
central issues in film studies as well as within the film industry. What 
models and norms of femininity/masculinity do film and television images 
present? Have these models changed over time? Can they be linked to 
specific actors and filmmakers? Are films made by women “special”? In 
her seminal 1975 article, Laura Mulvey added a political dimension to 
the analysis of gender models and stereotypes by taking into account 
specific film strategies to highlight the underlying relations of power 
between men and women. While Mulvey herself wrote “afterthoughts” in 
order to expand and qualify her concept of “male gaze,” power remains a 
fundamental issue, whether it be the power of the camera (what 
difference does the camera make between female/feminine and 
male/masculine bodies? How can male objectification be analyzed?), or 
the relations of power between men and women on- and off-screen. Can a 
commercial enterprise subvert the heteronormative gender order? How do 
independent productions deal with gender issues? The question of gender, 
its construction, representation and performance in the world of the 
moving image, is especially crucial in a context of controversies in 
France surrounding the so-called “theory of gender” (“la théorie du 
genre”), thus requiring further analysis.

The 21st SERCIA conference warmly invites film scholars to examine 
issues of gender through a variery of approaches (film aesthetics, film 
history, reception studies, sociology, economics, etc.). Comparative 
studies including at least one English-language film will be considered.

Keynote speakers will be Yvonne Tasker (University of East Anglia) and 
Jacqueline Nacache (Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot).

List of possible topics

- Masculinity and femininity in film and television productions
The changing models of masculinity and femininity according to 
historical, national and industrial contexts: what gender norms do 
silent stars embody? Has Girl Power given real power to women? What are 
the specificities of British, Australian, South-African masculinities 
and femininities?
Gender in film genres
Relationships between men and women at home and at work
Star studies
Gender and film technique: are men and women shown onscreen in the same 
way? (Differences in editing, in the use of close-ups, voice-over, 
music, special effects…)

- Women and men in the film and television industry
Relationships between filmmakers (male and female) and actors (male and 
female)
Women directors, producers, scriptwriters and actors in the industry and 
at the box office
Gender equality in the industry
Analyzing the paratext: gender in film and television marketing, 
posters, trailers, etc…

- Audiences and academia
Reception studies (how do films address women or men or both? How do 
audiences receive or “decode” the models put forward?)
Examples of readings against the grain or “queered” reception
Importance of gender in film criticism (Pauline Kael vs. Roger Ebert for 
example)
Women’s or LGBT film festivals and prizes
Controversies around “feminist” or “anti-feminist” productions (Gone 
Girl) or the representation of homosexuality (Brokeback Mountain)
Gender research within film and television studies and its evolution

Deadline for proposals: March 16, 2015

Please send abstracts (300 words) in English or in French, along with a 
short biography, to Julie Assouly ((assoulyjulie /at/ hotmail.com)), 
Jean-François Baillon ((jfbaillon /at/ sfr.fr)) and Marianne Kac-Vergne 
((mariannekac /at/ yahoo.fr))


Selected Bibliography

Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 
1930-1960, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1995
Bernardi, Daniel (dir.). Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, 
Producers, and Writers on Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Film, Austin: 
University of Texas Press, 2009
Brown, Jeffrey A. Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, 
and Popular Culture. Jackson : UP of Mississippi, 2011.
Cohan, Steven et Hark, Ina Rae (dirs). Screening the Male, Exploring 
Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, London: Routledge, 1993
De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. 
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984. ---. Technologies of Gender: essays on 
theory, film, and fiction, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987
Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female 
Spectator.” Screen 23.3-4 (1982): 74-88.
Gledhill, Christine. Nationalising Femininity: culture, sexuality and 
British cinema in the Second World War, Manchester: Manchester 
University Press, 2011
Grant, Barry Keith. Shadows of Doubt: negotiations of masculinity in 
American genre films,   Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011
Harper, Sue. Women in British Cinema. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, 
London and New York: Continuum, 2000.
hooks, bell. Real to Reel: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. New York 
and London: Routledge, 2009 [1996].
Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Masculinity in the Reagan Era, New 
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994
Joyrich, Lynne. Re-viewing Reception: television, gender and postmodern 
culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996
Jullier, Laurent and Leveratto, Jean-Marc. Les Hommes-objets au cinéma, 
Paris : Armand Colin, 2009
Laing, Heather. The Gendered Score: music in 1940s melodrama and the 
woman's film, Burlington: Ashgate, 2007
Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. London and New York: 
Routledge, 2005.
Moine, Raphaëlle. Les Femmes d’action au cinéma, Paris : Armand Colin, 2010
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, 16.3, 
Autumn 1975, 6-18
Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ 
inspired by Duel in the Sun”, in Penley, Constance (ed.), Feminism and 
Film Theory, New York: Routledge, 1988, 69-79
Nacache, Jacqueline. L’Acteur de cinéma, Paris : Armand Colin, 2005
Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and 
Mainstream Cinema”, Screen, 24.6, 1983, 2-17
Radner, Hilary, and Stringer, Rebecca. Feminism at the Movies: 
Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, Routledge, 2011
Rich, B. Ruby, New Queer Cinema: the director's cut, Durham: Duke 
University Press, 2013
Rowe, Kathleen. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter, 
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995
Sellier, Geneviève. « L’apport des gender studies aux études filmiques 
», in Kaenel, André, Lejeune, Catherine et Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne 
(eds), Cultural Studies, Etudes culturelles, Nancy : Presses 
Universitaires de Nancy, 2003, 113-130
Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis 
and Cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988
Spicer, Andrew. Typical Men. The Representation of Masculinity in 
Popular British Cinema, London et New York, I. B. Tauris, 2003
Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies, Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema, 
London: Routledge, 1993
Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls, Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, 
London: Routledge, 1998
Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and 
the Politics of Popular Culture, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007
Tasker, Yvonne. Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and 
Television since World War II, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011



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