CFP: Cinema and the Thought of Gender

Gettysburg College Philosophy and Film Seminar

 “Cinema and the Thought of Gender”

Call for Abstracts

April 7 & 8, 2017

Seminar Director: Vernon W. Cisney,

Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Gettysburg College

Keynote Speaker:

Michele Schreiber, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Emory University

Author of American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance and Contemporary Culture and co-editor of Indie Reframed: Women’s Filmmaking and Contemporary American Independent Cinema

The Gettysburg College Philosophy Department, in cooperation with the Cinema and Media Studies Program, are delighted to announce the 2nd annual meeting of the Gettysburg College Philosophy and Film Seminar, entitled “Cinema and the Thought of Gender.” As the popular art form that incorporates aspects of all other aesthetic media, cinema possesses a unique power to imaginatively transform our experience of the world. But by this same power, it is also capable of insidiously and unconsciously reinforcing our most pernicious preconceptions and stereotypes. This myriad potentiality is particularly salient as it pertains to the question of gender, insofar as cinema is fundamentally concerned with the images of living bodies. The cinematic representation of gender thus provides multiple avenues of theoretical exploration and analysis, from the philosophical to the cultural, economic, sociological, theological, aesthetic, and psychological.

The Gettysburg College Philosophy and Film Seminar will be held on the campus of Gettysburg College in historic Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, just one hour from Baltimore and ninety minutes from Washington, D.C. The vision of the seminar is to provide an intimate setting where collegial and rigorous intellectual enrichment of an interdisciplinary nature can take place. In the true spirit of the liberal arts, we invite submissions of abstracts from across the spectrum of academic disciplines.

Suggested questions include, but are not limited to, the following:

-        In what ways can seemingly traditionally gendered films subversively critique traditional categories?

-        What effects, if any, has the ‘Bechdel test’ had on popular cinema?

-        How can cinema constructively reorient conceptions of the relations between love, gender, community, and family?

-        What is the significance of the recent rise in popularity of ‘woman warrior’ film series such as The Hunger Games and Divergent?  

Seminar Details and Submission Instructions

Dates and Events: The seminar will take place on Friday and Saturday, April 7 & 8, 2017. In addition to the seminar sessions, there will be a public keynote address delivered by Prof. Michele Schreiber; a Gettysburg College Student Panel, titled ‘The Woman Director Speaks’; and a public film screening. To ensure the intimate collegiality of the event, we will accept no more than twelve participants to the seminar. For this reason, we ask that seminar participants plan to attend all associated events over the course of April 7 and 8.

Format: To optimize intellectual enrichment, the primary format of the seminar will be discussion, as opposed to presentation. Accepted papers will be collected and distributed to seminar participants one week prior to the seminar, to allow a basic familiarity with the arguments in advance. The participant’s allotted time at the seminar will then be forty-five minutes, ten of which will be devoted to the presentation of key passages and elements of the argument. The remaining thirty-five minutes will be dedicated entirely to discussion. With this in mind, in preparing an abstract, participants should think in the direction of approximately 12-15 pages for their papers.

Travel and Costs: There is no registration fee for the seminar, and shuttle transportation to and from the airport in either Washington, D.C. or Baltimore will be provided at no cost to seminar participants. In addition to light breakfasts, there will be light snacks, lunches, and dinners provided on the days of the seminar (April 7 & 8). As the events span the entirety of both days, participants traveling by air will want to plan to arrive on April 6 and depart on April 9, though we also encourage extending your stay should you wish to visit the battlefield or the Gettysburg National Cemetery. The GCPFS has blocked rooms at a conference rate, discounted for seminar participants, at the Gettysburg Hotel in the heart of downtown Gettysburg, just a few blocks from campus.

Please submit detailed abstracts of no more than 600 words, in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format, to the seminar director, Vernon Cisney, at [email protected], no later than January 1, 2017. Any questions may be so directed as well. In the abstract, please include title, author name and institutional affiliation, and contact information.