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CONFERENCE REPORT

 

From the Founder:  Goodbye to All That? 

A Report on the 2009 Literature/Film Association Conference, Carlisle, PA, October 15-18, 2009

 

Things change, and not always for the better, I was saddened to think while driving out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, after having attended the 2009 Liturature/Film Assn Conference organized by the retiring David Kranz, who had decided to give us one final gift, pro bono, as he said.  The weather had been wretched—even British, overcast and rainy—but at least lacking the snow that had struck the higher elevations, making “Happy Valley” less so.  Dickinson had provided a very successful and satisfying conference with an elegant and fluent plenary speaker (even if he cut off one of our precocious quippersnappers at the knees when asked—I thought reasonably— if he were privileging the verbal over the visual in discussing the “essay” film.  Well, maybe the problem was in the asking:  “I find your privileging of language quaint,” was the way one sympathetic friend remembered it.).  Post-Dickinson, perhaps some of you will have noticed the review of Phillip Lopate’s Notes on Sontag (Princeton UP, 2009) by Rachel Hadas of Rutgers University that appeared in TLS (October 16, 2009—sporting a cover portrait of a young Chas. Dickens).  Praising the book, she claims that Lopate, who met Susan Sontag when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, “has given us, in the modest guise of these Notes, an extraordinarily rewarding study.”  Professor Lopate, she wrote, has “the thoroughness and clarity of a latter-day Edmund Wilson and an urbanity and wit that are all his own” (p.29).  Perhaps you noticed?

               

This year’s achievement award was granted to the always remarkably composed past-President Peter Lev of Towson University, whom I consider the Perry Como of conference presenters, by which I mean that he has a particular genius for putting his audience at ease, besides being knowledgeable.  The Conference had a terrific turn-out, pulling back regulars like Bill Bartley from snowy Saskatchewan and newcomers like Rick Wallach from sunny Miami.  So I am obviously grateful to David Kranz, Nancy Mellerski, Cindy Miller, Linda Cahir, Tom Leitch, and others on the program committee I haven’t met.  Having said all this, why, then, should I be depressed?

               

Because with David retired and Nancy Mellerski stepping down as President, I am afraid the string of conferences at Dickinson College might well be broken.  It is, after all, a perfect venue for small conferences.  All activities were confined to five conveniently-located campus buildings, and the campus itself is located only a short walk from the Comfort Suites Carlisle downtown, surrounded by festive boutiques and yuppie fernbars, with Fay’s for brunch just down Hanover Street.  The hotel staff was constantly attentive and helpful and, well, Comfort-ing.  When a forgetful Presenter “X” discovered he had left his paper in Kansas, for example, could a crisis be averted?  No problem:  the desk staff at the Comfort Suites quickly and cheerfully provided e-mail back-up with excellent printing capacity.  So what if there was a loud wedding reception later on?  All was forgiven.

               

Towson is the only other conference facility I know that can begin to compete with Dickinson College.  Folks were certainly helpful at the University of Kansas, but the Union facilities there were atop Mt. Oread, causing logistical problems for conferees staying downtown in Lawrence.  The University of the Bosphorus was simply spectacular, I can tell you, but also (alas) Istanbul is Out There on the cusp of Asia, and very expensive to get to.  And Salisbury and Ocean City I fear are only memories of the distant and receeding past.  So places like Dickinson and Towson are greatly to be valued.  Next year we shall attempt to find happiness (and Love, perhaps?) in Milwaukee, cozied up to Film + History.  (Actually, I am rather looking forward to Milwaukee, even if historians are something of a different breed.)  And after that, who knows?  An interesting possibility may exist in northern Ohio, not so far from the Pennsylvania border.  But meanwhile, thank you David and Nancy for an excellent conference in 2009.  Enjoy your retirement, David, but please don’t stop writing, and please do join us later.

 

Jim Welsh, LFA Founder

Founding Editor, Literature/Film Quarterly

Salisbury University Emeritus   

 

 

LITERATURE/FILM QUARTERLY SPECIAL ISSUE

Focus:  Papers Presented at the Literature/Film Association Conference 2009

Deadline:  January 15, 2010

 

Presenters at the 2009 Literature/Film Association (LFA) conference are invited to submit their work for publication in a special issue of Literature/Film Quarterly; this special issue will be created by members of the LFA as well as the editorial board of Literature/Film Quarterly. Submissions will go through a peer-review process before being accepted for publication.  Only presentations from the 2009 conference are eligible for submission; they should, however, be revised for publication in an academic journal and according to the guidelines below. 

Although presenters are welcome to submit essays on any topic presented at LFA 2009, priority for the issue will be given to those articles which focus upon conference themes of technology, intertextuality, and adaptation in postmodernity. 

Each submission should be approximately 5,000 words, be double-spaced in 12 pt. Times New Roman, referenced in the New MLA Style and sent as a text file document (in Microsoft Word 98, 2000, 2003, or 2007 format). Each submission should be sent in duplicate hard copies (with text file on CD) to:

The Editors

Literature/Film Quarterly

Salisbury University

1101 Camden Ave.

Salisbury, MD 21801

[USA]

Submissions may also be emailed to litfilmquart@salisbury.edu (please ensure confirmation of receipt).  The deadline for submission is January 15, 2010.

If you have questions regarding this special issue, please contact the journal at litfilmquart@salisbury.edu

 

FILM & HISTORY/LFA CONFERENCE 2010

"Representing Love in Film and Television"

November 11-14, 2010

Hyatt Regency Hotel, Milwaukee WI

Second-Round Deadline for All Areas: March 1, 2010

Be sure to join the Literature/Film Association in 2010, for their joint conference with Film & History, "Representing Love in Film and Television," to be held November 11-14, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, in Milwaukee, WI. The onference will look at how love, inits many guises, forms, contexts and historical moments, has been represented and interpreted in moving image entertainment. Examinations of any facet of love, from the most brutal, to the most divine, are welcome.

Director and film theorist, Dr. Laura Mulvey, will be appearing as the keynote speaker. Dr. Mulvey, professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, is widely known for her influential essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), and is also the author of Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006), and Fetishism and Curiosity (1996), along with numerous articles. Her films, co-written and co-directed with Peter Wollen, are recognized for their complex explorations of identity, symbolism, and the female experience.

Submissions of papers, panels, and area proposals for the conference are currently being accepted. Please consult the Film & History website for a list of active areas and their chairs, or email Director of Communications, Cynthia Miller, at cymiller@tiac.net, for additional information.

 

ADAPTATION SECTION, NATIONAL POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION/AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2010

March 30-April 3, 2010

Renaissance Grand Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri

Deadline:  30 November 2009

Adapting Politics

Papers on any and all aspects of adaptation will be considered, but we are particularly interested in politically charged adaptations this year.  Film adaptations have, since their earliest days, been vehicles for political messages.  The blockbuster status of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), adapted from Thomas Dixion’s The Clansman, popularized Griffith’s bombastic political message of racism and segregation.  Later film adaptations were often more subtle with their messages.  Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still took a more or less innocuous Harry Bates adventure story and adapted it into a criticism of cold war militarism and the nuclear arms race.  In that same year Howard Hawks made his own cold war statement film, this time adapting John Campbell’s science fiction thriller “Who Goes There” into The Thing From Another World (1951).  Unlike Wise’s film, and Campbell’s short story, Hawks’s adaptation celebrates the role of the military as our only hope for survival in an increasingly dangerous world.  High Noon (1952) is another ‘50s film that took a genre (this time the western) and an adventure story (John Cunningham’s “The Tin Star”) and turned them toward political ends.  This year we’d like to take a special look at adaptations that have distinct political goals.

As always, we consider “adaptation” a way of looking at texts more than a particular brand of texts.  Thus we welcome papers on video game adaptations, new media adaptations, literature to literature adaptations, and radio adaptations along with film adaptations.  Papers on any and all aspects of adaptation (not just politics) will be considered.

Please send proposals as soon as possible to Dr. Dennis Cutchins (dennis_cutchins@byu.edu).  More information on the conference can be found at

http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php

 

LITERATURE/FILM ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2009

October 15-18, 2009

Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA

Deadline:  15 August 2009

 

“Texts, Technologies, and Intertextualities: Film Adaptation in a Postmodern World”  
 

Paper proposals are invited from ALL AREAS of adaptation studies and film or media studies.  Proposals relevant to the conference title above, including questions about graphic novels, comics, CGI, HD/Blue-ray television, home theater/surround sound, YouTube and other internet media, adapted screenplays, remakes, etc., are especially encouraged.  Also of significant interest are papers on literature/film theory, film and history, national cinemas, international cinematic influences, cultural and political issues related to film/media, and concepts of race/class/gender/sexual orientation in lit/film contexts.  We welcome as well papers comparing a single film and its source text, individual film analyses, auteur studies, and fresh looks at traditional genres and subgenres like film noir, war films, Shakespeare films, biopics, romantic comedies, and so on.

 

Proposal abstracts should be 300-500 words in length (eventual papers must be read in no more than 20 minutes) and are due by 15 August 2009.  Send by email attachment to David Kranz, LFA 2009 Conference Director, at kranz@dickinson.edu. Proposals sent by regular mail should be addressed to David Kranz at Dept. of English, Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013.  Rolling notifications of acceptance will arrive over the summer and by 1 September 2009 at the latest.

 

Conference Registration Fees: $100 before 25 September 2009 and $125 thereafter.  Fees for graduate students and retired professionals:  $75 before 25 September 2009 and $100 thereafter.  Make checks out to Dickinson College and mail to David Kranz at the address above.

 

LFA Dues: All conference attendees must be now or soon become members of LFA.  To join and pay 2009 dues of $20, please go to our website at http://alpha.dickinson.edu/departments/film/lfa/membership.htm

 

and use our PayPal feature or send a check to

 

Tina Lent, Professor and Chair, Fine Arts Department

College of Liberal Arts

Rochester Institute of Technology

92 Lomb Memorial Drive

Rochester, NY 14623-5604