[Commlist] cfp: Studying Female Voices in Cinema and Literature: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

*Studying Female Voices in Cinema and Literature: A Multidisciplinary 
Perspective***

*04/06/2025 Le Mans University - France*

Traditionally, male artistic creations have been granted 
hyper-visibility, leading to the marginalization of female artists and 
the neglect of the gendered dimensions of artistic production (Gørrill, 
2020). As Katrina Ginis, Sandra Elizabeth Stewart, and Leonie Kronborg 
(2023) argue, the male-dominated discourse has “failed to acknowledge 
the voices and contributions of women” (1), whose achievements merit 
recognition and critical engagement (Miller, 2016).By not accouting for 
gender and gender dynamics, scholarship in film and literature overlooks 
a crucial dimension of artistic creation—one that shapes not only the 
medium, which is also the message (McLuhan, 1964), but also its 
aesthetic and socio-cultural impact. A gendered lens can enrich the 
study of cinematographic and literary works by bringing to light female 
artists’ distinct, overlooked, and marginalized experiences. Examining 
female-authored works in cinema and literature is therefore essential to 
addressing traditional imbalances in artistic recognition.

In the 1970s, Stuart Hall provided a holistic perspective on the 
creation and reception of different art forms, moving from the 
production of meaning to its reception within the framework of Cultural 
Studies. Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model (1973) outlines three options 
through which the audience negotiates meaning: dominant, oppositional or 
negotiated. The films reveal for instance the impact of intersectional 
identities (Crenshaw 1989, 1991) of both creators and viewers. Laura 
Mulvey (1975) combined psychoanalysis with politics to introduce a 
feminist theory in film studies, while bell hooks (1999) analyzes how 
race and gender interfere with film formation and reception of discourse.

Joke Hermes (2014) and Andre Cavalcante et al. (2017) argue that 
feminist reception studies enhance “the evolving dynamics of audience 
interaction with feminist films, emphasizing the role of viewers’ 
identities and societal contexts in shaping their interpretations” 
(Cavalcante et al. 2017).Reception studies can also provide a valuable 
framework for analyzing female-authored works in both literature and 
cinema. Reception theory has vastly expanded in the past decades to 
encompass various forms of reception: reading and viewing are the focus 
of a multidisciplinary field bringing together contributions from 
boththe humanities and the social sciences (literary studies, film 
studies, history, sociology, anthropology, gender studies) and the hard 
sciences (cognitive science, computer science).

Aiming to further explore the gendered dimension of artistic creations 
from a multidisciplinary perspective, this study day seeks to bring 
together scholars in literary and film studies, with a particular focus 
on the work of female authors and filmmakers. We welcome contributions 
adopting a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches 
(reading studies, gender studies, digital humanities, emotion research, 
translation studies, and film studies) to study female-produced literary 
works and films, their creation, their reception, and impact. We invite 
scholars, young researchers, artists, and activists to contribute with a 
paper or a talk that explores female creations in France, the UK, and/or 
the USA and send their (300-word) abstracts and a short biography (150 
words) (toBourenane.is.ka /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(Bourenane.is.ka /at/ gmail.com)>(andElena.Prat /at/ univ-lemans.fr) 
<mailto:(Elena.Prat /at/ univ-lemans.fr)>before 20/03/2025.

The languages of the study day: French and English.

In-person contributions are preferred, but a hybrid format can be 
considered for exception requests.

*Dates***

**

Deadline for submission: 20/03/2025

Acceptance email: 26/03/2025

Event day: 04/06/2025**

**

**

*Suggested Bibliography*

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End Press, 1999.

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Claude Maillard, Gallimard, 1978.

Jenkins, Henry./Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory 
Culture/. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2012,https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203114339 
<https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203114339>.

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118–31./JSTOR/,https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20krxjt.13 
<https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt20krxjt.13>.

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Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’./Screen/, vol. 16, 
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6–18./Silverchair/,https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6 
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Ouvry-Vial, Brigitte, and Nathalie Richard. “The Benefits and 
Limitations of Digital Tools to Retrieve the Emotions of 
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<https://doi.org/10.15388/Knygotyra.2022.78.112>.

Picard, Michel./La lecture comme jeu/. Éditions de Minuit, 1986.

Staiger, Janet./Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception 
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Staiger, Janet./Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception/. 
NYU Press, 2000.

van Hek, Margriet, et al. “Educational Systems and Gender Differences in 
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Review/, vol. 35, no. 2, Apr. 2019, pp. 
169–86./Silverchair/,https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcy054 
<https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcy054>.**


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