[Commlist] 26th SERCIA Conference "Cosmopolitan Aspirations"

CALL FOR PAPERS

*Cosmopolitan Aspirations in English-Speaking Cinema and Television*

26^th Annual SERCIA Conference

Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain

September 2-4, 2020


It has become almost mandatory to start any piece on cosmopolitanism 
with a reference to Diogenes the Cynic (412-323 BC) and his famous claim 
“I am a citizen of the world”. Alluring as the phrase may sound to our 
21st century ears, when uttered by Diogenes, it was an invitation to be 
a social outsider: the allegiance to humanity as a whole implied 
becoming an exile from the comforts of one’s place of birth and social 
group (Nussbaum 1994). Two thousand years later, Immanuel Kant 
considered that the achievement of a cosmopolitan order was a must “if 
the human race was not to consume itself in wars between nations and if 
the power of nation-states was not to overwhelm the freedom of 
individual” (Fine and Cohen 2002). Kant’s ideals about a cosmopolitan 
world order, cosmopolitan law and cosmopolitan hospitality became the 
foundation on which moral cosmopolitanism, understood as a philosophical 
and political project aimed at the creation of cosmopolitan political 
institutions and the development of a cosmopolitan civil society, 
started to be theorised. This cosmopolitan tradition became especially 
appealing in the 1990s, a decade that witnessed the fall of the Berlin 
Wall and the end of apartheid, among other epochal changes, as well as 
the widespread use of the Internet and the emergence of the so-called 
network society. Cosmopolitanism became then a framework (or a 
“methodology” in Ulrich Beck’s words) to try to understand and deal with 
some of the challenges of globalization: the increased mobilities of 
people and goods, the proliferation of global risks, the redefinition of 
borders and the proliferation of global media and virtual communities, 
among others (Beck 2000).


The development of cinema in the late nineteenth century fed into 
cosmopolitan aspirations of modern city life and an increasing desire 
for travel. Films crossed national borders and opened up spaces for 
spectators’ mediated engagement with difference. The history of cinema 
abounds in examples of filmmakers that abandoned national contexts as 
their immediate frame of reference and created their work from and for a 
cosmopolitan imagination. Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Ernst Lubitsch, 
Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls and, more recently, Michael Haneke, Alejandro 
González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Yorgos Lanthimos immediately come 
to mind, but the list of travelling filmmakers, past and present, is 
much longer, and it includes names much more closely associated with a 
particular national or local identity, from Jean Renoir to Wong Kar-wai 
– not to mention, of course, travelling actors contributing to foster 
cosmopolitan aspirations, from Maurice Chevalier to Marion Cotillard and 
Charlotte Gainsbourg, from Louise Brooks to Marlene Dietrich, from Jean 
Seberg to Kristen Stewart, from Ingrid Bergman to Max von Sydow, from 
Jackie Chan to Maggie Cheung, from Dolores del Río to Penélope Cruz, 
from Sophia Loren to, yes, Clint Eastwood. The development of 
communication technologies since the 1980s has also led to the 
development of “globally dispersed productions.” Filmmakers, actors and 
technicians from all over the world form networks of international 
professionals collaborating beyond national differences. The outcome of 
these constant border-crossings have been innumerable films that have 
complicated national identities and showcased hybridity, and have 
explored the dynamic between the familiar and the stranger in a myriad 
ways. Similarly, from its inception, television brought other cultures 
and ways of seeing the world into the domestic space of one’s home. 
Digital television and multimedia platforms can now create cosmopolitan 
communities on demand. Audiovisual media have always played and are 
still playing a crucial role in the process that Beck refers to as the 
“cosmopolitanization” of the world. Yet, when compared to the existing 
literature on the issue in other areas, cosmopolitanism still remains a 
largely underexplored subject in film and television studies.


This conference will explore the ways in which cosmopolitan aspirations 
(and their enemies” in Ulrich Beck’s words) have made their way into 
English-speaking cinema and television across different time periods, 
nations, genres and media. Areas to be explored include but are not 
limited to:

      * onscreen representations and constructions of cosmopolitan
        identities
      * the places of the cosmopolitan: borders, borderlands and global
        cities
      * the risk society: eco-cosmopolitanism
      * agents of cosmopolitanism onscreen: frequent travellers,
        tourists, migrants and refugees
      * cosmopolitanism and gender
      * cosmopolitan performances, performing cosmopolitanism
      * intimate encounters in a global context
      * visual and narrative articulations of the cosmopolitan
      * cosmopolitanism in film and television genres
      * cosmopolitan directors and stars. Celebrity cosmopolitanism
      * the limits and contradictions of onscreen cosmopolitanism
      * co-productions as cosmopolitan, global and/or transnational
        production strategies
      * cinematic and televisual representations of the global society
      * cosmopolitan film and television networks
      * globally-dispersed productions. Global industry, local labour
      * cosmopolitan communities and multimedia digital platforms
      * film and TV reception around the world: local, global and/or
        cosmopolitan audiences
      * cosmopolitanism and multilingual films, the politics of dubbing,
        subtitling and double versions

*Keynote Speakers:*

Juan Suárez (Universidad de Murcia)

Deborah Shaw (University of Portsmouth)


*Submission:*

Please submit a 300-500 word abstract and short bio (120 words) in 
English by *May 1st**^, 2020 *to the conference website:

http://eventos.unizar.es/ 43243/upload/cosmopolitan- aspirations-in- 
englishspeaking-cinema-and- television.html 
<http://eventos.unizar.es/43243/upload/cosmopolitan-aspirations-in-englishspeaking-cinema-and-television.html> 


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