CFP: Masks, Echoes, Shadows colloquium

Seen on the Classicists list:

CALL FOR PAPERS
Masks, Echoes, Shadows: Locating Classical Receptions in the Cinema
29 May 2012, Institute of Classical Studies, London

Cinema’s fascination with the classical past can take many forms. In recent years, scholarly and popular attention has mostly been directed at films that recreate and reconstruct the narratives of ancient history and mythology, such as Gladiator and Clash of the Titans. Alongside these high-profile titles, though, are a wide range of other films whose relationship to antiquity may be much more intangible and ephemeral. Whether identifying Homeric references in O Brother, Where art Thou? or Mike Leigh’s Naked, assessing Star Wars’ debt to Roman history, or examining the recurrence of the Oedipus story in the cinema, there are a multitude of ways in which shadows of the past can be detected, classical motifs can be masked and unmasked, and echoes of ancient texts or events can reverberate. Recent publications by scholars such as Martin Winkler and Simon Goldhill have advanced this area of classical reception studies, but the underlying theoretical issues require further attention.

For example:

· What is at stake in making such connections? How far can we go in claiming a relationship between a film and a classical text, or idea?

· Whose reading bears the most authority, and how far can the relationship between ancient and modern be stretched before it becomes implausible or irrelevant?

· How do such propositions intersect with existing frameworks for classical reception study?

This one-day colloquium therefore aims to bring together scholars and students of classics and film in order to discuss new research in this area. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers on classical connections (broadly conceived) in any films which are, by and large, not set in antiquity (whether a historical or mythical ancient world) and which are not readily understood as adaptations of ancient texts (although a key area of debate will be the questioning of what constitutes an adaptation); we would expect all contributors to engage with the theoretical implications of their chosen case studies.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both colloquium organisers by Friday December 16, 2011.

Organisers:

Anastasia Bakogianni, Open University (a.bakogianni AT open.ac.uk)

and

Joanna Paul, Open University (Joanna.Paul AT open.ac.uk)