[Commlist] CfP COLL George A. Romero, l'œuvredévorée? / A Cannibalized Body of Work?

Call for Papers International Conference

George A. Romero: A Cannibalized Body of Work?

November 24-25, 2022, Montpellier, France


Dug up in 2019, The Amusement Park (1973), and released in theaters in 
June 2021, commissioned by the Lutherian Church, stands as a reminder 
that George Andrew Romero (1940-2017) was not just the director of Night 
of the Living Dead (1968) and creator of the modern zombie. By focusing 
on an old man abandoned in a theme park where he will be subjected to 
all sorts of humiliation and abuse, the Pittsburgh director once again 
fires away at US-American society and remains faithful to an aesthetics 
whereby the figures of Gothic horror are portrayed in a raw realist mode.

Prompted by this posthumous release, and considering the continued 
relevance of Romero’s stories of contamination, zombified lives, and 
deserted stores and streets in the light of a global pandemic, this 
two-day international conference aims to decenter the habitual views 
cast on a body of work that has been cannibalized by the living dead. 
From 1968 to 2009, ten out of the sixteen feature films directed by 
Romero have ignored the creature to focus on witches in Jack’s 
Wife/Season of the Witch (1972), vampires in Martin (1977), killer 
monkeys in Monkey Shines (1988) and faceless yuppies in Bruiser (2000).

The conference aims to engage with this less familiar facet of Romero’s 
cinema, which goes well beyond horror and the Fantastic (Romero’s second 
feature film, the 1971 There’s Always Vanilla, is essentially a romcom), 
and to approach his work from perspectives other than the usual 
ideological approaches that emphasise Romero’s critique of contemporary 
patriarchal capitalism. Novel political approaches (ecological, 
intersectional, queer approaches, etc.) are warmly encouraged.

The conference also ambitions to uncover other original features and 
practices of the director, screenwriter and editor, whose formal talent 
has drawn less attention than that of his peers (John Carpenter and 
David Cronenberg). It also aims to inscribe Romero’s oeuvre within its 
production context, and notably with the growing popularity of the 
horror genre that has spilled out of the less savory waters of 
exploitation into the mainstream. The cohesion of Romero’s films, 
whether formal (screenwriting, directing, editing, his use of sound 
banks) or thematic (utopia, the couple, the community, religion, 
contamination, etc.), will be studied beyond the figure of the zombie. 
Attention can also be paid to his work’s relationship to other media, 
including television and the newsreel, comics (Creepshow [1982]), 
literature (adaptations like The Dark Half [1993]) and, more broadly, 
his debt to literary genres and traditions (the Gothic, of course, but 
also the Arthurian myth in Knightriders [1981]).

Anchored in the city of Pittsburgh until the director moved to Toronto 
in 2004, Romero’s output also proposes a cinematic topography and 
geography that questions the place of the human in a modern urban world 
(Martin, the director’s favorite film of his own probably offers the 
most striking example). To what extent do Romero’s spaces, whether urban 
or rural, provide the material for an aesthetics (relying on nostalgia, 
parody, realism or poetry) or a personal politics? Can they also be seen 
as characteristic of  certain tendencies in North American cinema and 
culture of the time?

Finally, can Romero’s body of work be understood in relation to various 
understandings of classical, modernist and postmodern cinema? How does 
the director appropriate and possibly rewrite classical genres such as 
the Gothic, horror, the Fantastic, the road movie, the Western (Martin 
and Knightriders again comes to mind)? Though case studies of the 
living-dead movies are by no means excluded, special attention will be 
given to the “minor” or “unknown” films and their place in contemporary 
North American cinema and genres. Studies of the reception of these 
films are particularly welcome.

A maverick director who ultimately came to enjoy a cult status among 
horror fans and even auteur status in France, Romero systematically 
found himself working with low budgets, which largely conditioned the 
writing and production of his films, and which came with their lot of 
freedom and constraints. To what extent are these production conditions 
responsible for the director’s self-declared mode of “guerilla 
filmmaking”? How did they affect his reliance on homemade special 
effects (his long-term collaboration with Tom Savini can be explored in 
this respect), his editing technique and casting decisions (with 
professional actors working alongside ordinary Pittsburgh residents such 
as John Amplas)? Romero’s body of work largely relies on a group of 
faithful collaborators and friends (producer Richard P. Rubinstein, 
writer Stephen King, makeup artistic/actor Tom Savini, director Dario 
Argento), who often deliberately sought to enhance the Romerian 
aesthetics and politics (in the case of King and Savini) but 
occasionally defamiliarized and perhaps even perverted it (in the case 
of Argento). Speakers are encouraged to explore how such collaborations 
contributed to nourish and sustain Romero’s films.

This international conference thus aims to shed light on the dark half 
of the Romerian moon, which has consistently been obscured by the 
cannibal figure of the zombie, and to call on theoretical and 
methodological concepts and approaches that have not been utilized to 
study the director’s work. Proposals can focus on the following points:

    Analyses of Romero’s non-living dead films
    New political approaches to Romero's work (e.g. ecological, 
intersectional, queer approaches)
    Production contexts
    Formal and thematic coherences beyond the figure of the zombie
    Romero's work and other media (e.g. literature, television, comics)
    Romero's collaborators
    "Guerilla" filmmaking methods
    Reception studies
    Romero's work as classical/modernist/postmodern cinema



Proposals can be in English or in French and must include a 200-300 
words abstract, a short bibliography and blurb: they should be sent by 
January 31 2022 to: (romeroreturns22 /at/ gmail.com)


Our keynote speakers will be David Church (Indiana University) and 
Sophie Lécole-Solnychkine (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès).

This conference is part of the “Films and Series: Politics of 
Audiovisual Forms,” a research program of the RiRRa21, and is organized 
in collaboration with the Université de Bourgogne-Franche Comté (CRIT) 
and the Université de Grenoble Alpes (Litt&Arts).



Conference organization : Julien Achemchame (Université Paul Valéry 
Montpellier 3), Adrienne Boutang (Université de Bourgogne-Franche 
Comté), Claire Cornillon (Université de Nîmes), Pierre Jailloux 
(Université de Grenoble Alpes), David Roche (Université Paul Valéry 
Montpellier 3)


International Scientific Committee: Frédéric Astruc (Université Paul 
Valéry Montpellier 3), Mélanie Boissonneau (Université Sorbonne 
Nouvelle), Christophe Chambost (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Wickham 
Clayton (University for the Creative Arts), Hélène Frazik (Université de 
Caen Basse Normandie), Julia Hedstrom (Université de Lausanne), Barbara 
Le Maître (Université Paris Nanterre), Janice Loreck (University of 
Melbourne), Laura Mee (University of Hertfordshire), Denis Mellier 
(Université de Poitiers), Benjamin Thomas (Université de Strasbourg)


Selected Bibliography

Bishop, Kyle William. How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture: The 
Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century. McFarland, 2015.

Chambost, Christophe. “Trouble Every Day in Gothic Suburbia: 
Disorientation in George Romero’s The Season of the Witch/Jack’s Wife.” 
In Gothic News Volume 2: Studies in Classic Contemporary Gothic, dirigé 
par GIlles Menegaldo.. Michel Houdiard, 2010, pp. 128-39.

Daniel, Joachim. George A. Romero et les zombies : autopsie d’un 
mort-vivant. L’Harmattan, 2014.

Lafond, Frank (ed.). George A. Romero, un cinéma crépusculaire. Michel 
Houdiard, 2008.

Le Maître, Barbara. Zombie, une fable anthropologique. PU de Paris 
Ouest, 2014.

--- (ed.). La Nuit des morts-vivants, George A. Romero : précis de 
composition. Le Bord de l’eau, 2016.

Menegaldo, Gilles. “La Nuit des morts vivants de George A. Romero (1968) 
une modernité subversive.” In Cauchemars américains : Fantastique et 
horreur dans le cinéma moderne, edited by Frank Lafond. Éditions du 
Céfal, 2003. pp. 141-58.

Paffenroth, Kim. Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of 
Hell on Earth. Baylor University Press, 2006.

Phillips, Kendall R. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the 
Modern Horror Film. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.

Pitassio, Francesco, “Mauvais rêves. George A. Romero, les morts-vivants 
et le cauchemar américain.” In Les Peurs de Hollywood : phobies sociales 
dans le cinéma fantastique américain, edited by Laurent Guido. Éditions 
Antipodes, 2006, pp. 115-27.

Roche, David. “Resisting Bodies: Power Crisis/Meaning Crisis in the 
Zombie Movie from 1932 to today.” Textes & Contextes, vol. 6, 2011, 
https://preo.u-bourgogne.fr/textesetcontextes/index.php?id=327.

---. Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s: Why Don’t They 
Do It Like They Used To? University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

Samocki, Jean-Marie. “Du cannibale : un précis de décomposition - à 
propos de la trilogie des morts-vivants de George A. Romero.” 
Simulacres, vol. 1, 1999, pp. 34-45.

Sévéon, Julien. George A. Romero : révolutions, zombies et chevalerie 
(édition augmentée). ESC Editions, 2021.

Sutherland, Meghan. “Rigor/Mortis: The Industrial Life of Style in 
American Zombie Cinema.” Framework, vol. 48, n°1, pp. 64-78.

Thoret, Jean-Baptiste (ed.). Politique des zombies : l’Amérique selon 
George A. Romero. Ellipses, 2007.

Thoret, Jean-Baptiste. “Nous mangeons ce que nous cuisinons : 
conversation avec George A. Romero.” Simulacres, vol. 6, 2002, pp. 89-110.

Waller, Gregory A. “Land of the Living Dead.” The Living and the Undead: 
From Stoker’s Dracula to Romero’ s Dawn of the Dead. University of 
Illinois Press, 1986, pp. 272-327.

Williams, Tony. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror 
Film. 1996. University Press of Mississippi, 2014.

---. The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead. 2003. 
Wallflower Press, 2015.

--- (ed.). George A. Romero: Interviews. University Press of 
Mississippi, 2011.

Wood, Robin. Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan . . . and Beyond. 1986. 
Columbia University Press, 2003.
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