Literature/Film Quarterly

The International Journal of Adaptation Studies  •  Established 1973

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Calls for Papers, News, and Events:  2008

If you have an item you think would be of interest to this list, please email Literature/Film Quarterly at litfilmquart@salisbury.edu.

 

 

Call for Papers:

Film and Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond

Biennial Conference by the Center for the Study of Film and History

 

30 October 2008 – 2 November 2008

Chicago, Illinois  USA

Website:  www.filmandhistory.org

 

Deadline:  August 1, 2008

 

The Center for the Study of Film and History, publisher of the scholarly journal, Film & History, will conduct its 5th biennial conference, “Film and Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond,” in Chicago, October 30 - November 2, 2008, at The Westin O’Hare Hotel.

 

The third-round deadline for the submission of abstracts and inquires is August 1, 2008, but panels are being formed now, and prompt submissions find the most compatible scheduling and contexts.

 

A wide range of areas, concerns, and historical eras will be represented at the conference, including scientific icons, animation, exploration, extraterrestrials, and forensics, and the work of filmmakers such as David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg.  Each area will consist of multiple panels, so opportunities abound.  A complete listing of areas and their detailed calls for papers may be found on the Film & History website, along with contact information for area chairs.  Abstracts may be sent directly to the chair of your chosen area, or to either Loren PQ Baybrook, the new director of the Center (filmandhistory@uwosh.edu), or Cynthia Miller, the Call-for-Papers Manager (cymiller@tiac.net).

 

Featured speakers will include special-effects legend Stan Winston. Also scheduled for plenary sessions are noted scholars Wheeler Winston Dixon (author of Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood) and Sidney Perkowitz (author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World).

 

Several publication opportunities will derive from the conference, ranging from proceedings to themed journal issues to edited volumes by publishers who will attend the event to talk with scholars.

 

Additional information on conference registration, accommodations, and other details may be found on the website.  Conference registration fees include a full year of the journal, but a separate online subscription form for Film & History is available for individuals who would like to begin receiving the journal immediately.

 

Inquiries: filmandhistory@uwosh.edu

Web address: www.filmandhistory.org

 

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Film and History.

 

 

New Website:

 

Literature/Film Association

 

The Literature/Film Association now has a website:  click here (or above) for their new home on the web!  As the website itself notes, "The Literature/Film Association, established in 1989, encourages a wide variety of approaches to the study of cinema, with special focus on the relationship of literature and film. It supports and promotes cinema studies, largely by planning and running an annual conference of film scholars from across the country and around the globe."  On their new website, you'll find a comprehensive newsletter on various events in the association, information on upcoming conferences, and also instructions for becoming a member.  One excellent feature of their most recent newsletter includes "Favorite Adaptations to Teach," in which a number of scholars reflect candidly on their adapation pedagogy.  If you are at all interested in the study of adaptation, this association is well worth becoming a part of.

 

 

Periodically Yours:  Plugging the Bosphorus, and then some

by Jim Welsh

Founder, Literature/Film Association, and Co-Founding Editor, Literature/Film Quarterly

[Part of this article also appears on the Literature/Film Association Newsletter, posted at their website here.]

Once upon a time, back when I fancied myself somehow in demand, I wrote a column called “Periodically Yours” that ran irregularly in a half-dozen newspapers, in Literature/Film Quarterly, then in American Classic Screen, and even, for a while, in Filmviews, in Australia. I thought (being me) the title was pretty clever, since the column appeared “periodically” and since the subject, after all, was “periodicals”—mainly film periodicals, but I’ve since grown up. Now that I am retired, my interests are running more towards academic conferences, where I still keep running into periodicals. There was the promise of a new periodical, for example, at that conference at Oglethorpe University last year, which resulted ion the publication of Adaptation this past March.

But wait—there’s still another possibility! At Popular Culture national in San Francisco Easter weekend of 2008 I met the outgoing and extraordinary Richard J. Hand, who worked his rhetorical legerdemain both at the conference and on the radio, since he was also involved in mounting a play out in the City By the Bay. Richard presented me with Vol.1, No.1 of his new Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, which celebrated its first issue just a bit earlier than Adaptation in November, 2007. Richard teaches at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries (!) at the University of Glamorgan in Wales and, having met with him, I only wish I could attend his forthcoming conference in Cardiff (one of my favorite cities in the country my surname belongs to) in June 2008, but, alas, it’s too late for me, were I bright enough to qualify. Anyone else interested, however, should write to rhand@glam.ac.uk.

Therefore, I’ll just have to settle for the delights of Istanbul, courtesy of Laurence Raw and his friends running the American Studies Assn. of Turkey, when the next Literature/Film Assn. Conference convenes at the University of the Bosphorus on October 10th, 2008.  This will be my next stop in my continuing quest for friendly conferences—though I must say it will be hard to top the continuing Geműtlichkeit of Albuquerque (Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA) and San Francisco (PCA/ACA national), or, for that matter, the wonderfully named ShInE Conference in Iaşi, Moldavia (“Shakespeare In Europe,” hooray for Balz Engler and Odette Blumenfeld, et al.—see my literaturecompass blog for Blackwell for pictures and details)  The topic for our Istanbul Conference is “Adapting America/America Adapted” and American and British scholars are eagerly sought.  Moreover, simply the best plenary speaker I know has been invited to keynote.  Laurence Raw (no doubt on his way back to Ankara as I write) promises an excellent evening of “Fish by the Bosphorus,” combining conversation and cuisine in a Turkish-delightful way, so that a good time may be had by all.  Laurence has just published a new book, entitled Adapting Nathaniel Hawthorne to the Screen (Scarecrow Press, 2008), so send him your congratulations and conference proposals at l_rawjalaurence@yahoo.com   [Editor's Note:  The CFP for the conference appears below.  To access, click here.]

In closing, another word of congratulations to the redoubtable Dr. Tibbetts, who organized the last LFA Conference at the University of Kansas in 2007, for John Tibbetts has been named a 2008 recipient of the Kansas Governor’s Art Award for Arts in Education.  Meanwhile, John is working to complete his book on the British director Tony Palmer, whose work will be far better known in the United States (we hope!) after the release of Tony’s television history of popular music.  Stay tuned for that (featuring the Rolling Stones and the Beatles; John Lennon, encouraged by Palmer’s 1968 rock documentary All My Loving, approached Tony Palmer to suggest that he undertake a documentary of the whole pop music scene, with Lennon securing interviews with many of the rockers profiled), and watch the forthcoming titles from Southern Illinois University Press.

I should probably also mention another book about to be uttered (a display copy had been printed up for the PCA/ACA San Francisco conference):  Conversations with Directors:  An Anthology of Interviews from Literature/Film Quarterly (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), edited by Elsie Walker and Dave Johnson.  In a way, no one would be better qualified to evaluate these interviews, since I originally vetted, solicited, and encouraged all but two of them.  The collection begins with Gerry Barrett’s interview with Jonas Mekas.  At the time Gerry, a friend and colleague of Tom Erskine’s at the University of Delaware, was one of the three original editors of LFQ (in fact, I remember driving with the two of them through the roadside attractions of Terre Haute, Indiana, on our way to the 1975 Popular Culture Association national conference in St. Louis).  Gerry Barrett moved on from Delaware to Texas, but, years later, lo and behold, his enthusiasm resulted not in a book on Mekas, but in the G.K. Hall volume Stan Brakhage:  A Guide to References and Resources (1983). Barrett was our go-to guy then for interviews, as evidenced by his second interview, this time with William Friedkin, addressing, initially, The Exorcist.  (We should have interviewed Jordan Leondopoulus, who was Friedkin’s supervising film editor on The Exorcist and who, later taught cinema, and, for a while, became a regular at LFA conferences and lectured as my guest at Salisbury, where he described what it was like to work with “Hurricane Billy.”)  Ah, sweet nostalgia. 

I certainly remember two of the interviews I was most proud to have published:   Krystyna Przybylska’s “Interview with Andrzej Wajda”  (1977),  and Royal S. Brown’s “Alain Robbe-Grillet” (1989).  I remember the latter because it happened quite by accident.  In a conversation with Royal Brown on something to do, perhaps, with music and film, he mentioned that Robbe-Grillet would be on his campus as a guest lecturer, and I flipped.  The spokesman for the nouveau roman and the writer-director of the cinema’s greatest puzzler, Last Year at Marienbad?  Please, Royal, I begged, will you interview him for us if possible, and he did, making my career as editor worthwhile, and justifying my very existence. 

Speaking of whom, Royal S. Brown kept a regular column called “Film Musings” for almost twenty years for Fanfare magazine, where he also served as music editor, besides his academic career as chair of the Department of European Languages and Literatures and director of Film Studies at Queens College, New York.  About half of what he wrote for that column has now been published under the title Film Musings (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), in an oversized volume that runs to 417 pages.  The organization is bothersome, by month and year, though a Film Index is provided to help readers find what may be of interest.  Check out the entry for Eyes Wide Shut (pp. 320-322) and you’ll soon discover that the interest and scope of these “musings” go beyond film music, which Brown discusses, from Shotakovich’s Jazz Suite No. 2 to Gyorgy Ligrti’s Musica Ricercata, II.  Of course, Royal knows music, but he is also worth listening to when explaining that the film is not simply about sex, but, rather, about a “patriarchal male’s displacement of his sexuality onto or into such things as impossible wealth, voyeurism, game playing, aesthetics, and, ultimately, death.”  Such examples abound, but see also the tributes to film composer Miklós Rózsa (pp.179-180) and George Korngold (pp. 47-48).  Too bad that the book may at first glance seem too specialized for readers who might really enjoy reading it.

____________________________________________________

Jim Welsh, Emeritus Co-Founding Editor of LFQ, is working on his 17th and 18th books.  His last published effort was The [as yet unreviewed] Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation, edited with Peter Lev for Scarecrow Press in 2007.  He has recently been invited to join the Advisory Board of The Journal of American Culture, where he has been quietly working with Book Review Editor Ray Browne, the Founder of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association.

The sometimes contentious Jim Welsh can be reached at jxwelsh@salisbury.edu  but be advised, though not by nature a backbiter, he may bite back.

 

American Studies Association of Turkey


33rd Annual American Studies Conference

In collaboration with

The Literature Film Association (LFA)

Adapting America/America Adapted

October 8 – 10, 2008


Bogazici University

Istanbul, Turkey

This conference seeks to define a new agenda for adaptation studies, specifically, as a branch of American Studies that not only encompasses literature and visual media, but also a wide-range of subject areas including, but not limited to, history, anthropology, political science, philosophy, sociology, the performing arts, and cultural/ethnic studies.  By looking at adaptation in relation to the United States, we seek to investigate a variety of culturally and historically transformative strategies.  We also seek to examine how the process of adaptation has been influenced by social, ideological and political factors both inside and outside the United States. 

While, traditionally, adaptation refers to the transformation of literary texts into different forms of media (e.g., films and television programs), the concept of adaptation can also be applied to other disciplines.  Historians engage in process of negotiating or "adapting" various histories, or dialogues, when they tell the story of a nation; politicians adapt/adopt different philosophies, at different times, to suit their particular interests; and artists and musicians adapt/adopt a broad range of cultural signifiers when creating new works, conventions, and/or trends.

The American Studies Association of Turkey invites proposals that consider adaptation, broadly conceived.  We particularly encourage proposals which incorporate transdisciplinary explorations of adaptation, and welcome proposals from any field of study. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

The time allowance for all presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion. 

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, exhibits, and other modes of creative expression should be sent to both Louis Mazzari (louis_mazzari@hotmail.com) and Tanfer Emin Tunc (asat2007@gmail.com) and should consist of a 250 - 300 word abstract in English, as well as a 1 - 2 paragraph biographical description for each participant. Alternatively LFA members may also send a proposal to the LFA representative on the conference organizing committee, Laurence Raw (l_rawjalaurence@yahoo.com).

Deadline for submission of proposals: May 31, 2008

Notification for acceptance of proposals: August 15, 2008

Co-sponsored by the Embassy of the United States 

 

Literature/Film Quarterly is produced at Salisbury University.  For more information about our publication or this website, email us at litfilmquart@salisbury.edu.