Transgression and its Limits - PG Conference CFP

Transgression and its Limits

29-30th May 2010
University of Stirling

Plenary Speaker:
Professor Fred Botting
Reading followed by Q&A Session:
Iain Banks

To discover the complete horizon of a society’s symbolic values, it is also necessary to map out its transgressions, its deviants ~ Marcel Détienne.

Rule-breaking has always been a central aspect of literary and cultural development. The works of Marquis de Sade, William Burroughs and Kathy Acker help define the canon of transgressive fiction, while Bakhtin, Bataille and Foucault have become its philosophers and apologists. From the law-breaking obscenity of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover to the immoralilty of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, transgressive art has offended the old order for the sake of a new.

The commodification of extreme horror in recent movies and the faux-antagonism of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk both reveal the paradox of a transgression which has now established its own conventions. Is transgression more than the tradition of subverting tradition? Have the conditions of post-modernity exhausted our ability to be shocked?

The aim of this conference is to provide an interdisciplinary forum to consider transgressive tactics in literature, film, critical theory and other cultural productions. To what extent has transgression helped shape sexual, cultural and artistic landscapes of its own period? We invite abstracts for 20-minute papers focusing on transgressive, taboo-breaking and politically resistant acts in literature and the arts.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Violence
• Profanity
• The Sacred
• Sexuality and the body
• Obscenity and pornography
• Aberrance, Fetish, Perversion
• The New Horror – ‘torture porn’
• Avant-garde cinema, Cinema of Transgression
• The Carnivalesque
• Gender roles
• Censorship – cultural reactions to transgressive texts
• Violence against the text – formal/textual transgression
• Postmodernism’s transgression of the high/low cultural divide

Please send a 300-word abstract and a 50-word biography to Aspasia Stephanou, Matthew Foley and Neil McRobert at transgression@stir.ac.uk by March 19th 2010.

(www.transgression.stir.ac.uk)

--
The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2009/2010
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland,
number SC 011159.

Journal of Screenwriting CFP

Journal of Screenwriting Call for Papers Volume 2.1

We invite researchers, educators and practitioners to contribute to Issue 2.1 of the Journal of Screenwriting, a new peer-reviewed journal set up to focus on this important aspect of moving image pre-production and
conceptualisation. Contributions are sought on the history, theory and practice of screenwriting and related topics, covering a wide range of practices from film and television to animation, new media and computer games.

The Journal of Screenwriting brings together research and reflection on pedagogy, professionalism and practice in an area which has been somewhat overlooked in academic discourse. New work has conventionally been scattered throughout journals devoted to specific aspects of media theory or practice, and this is the first UK academic journal to bring together serious screenwriting-related work under one title. The Journal is international in scope, and seeks wide-ranging work which is critical, rigorous and original in its contribution to this developing area of study. We expect to include work which employs a diverse range of methodological approaches, including textual analysis, production analysis, practice as research and historical investigation.

Articles should be between 4000 and 7000 words in length. Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Screenplay text analysis
• Studies of individual practitioners, including screenwriters
• Story and narrative analysis
• Methodologies and theories appropriate for research and study in this field
• Industrial structures, institutions and practices in relation to screenwriting
• Gender and race issues
• Genre studies
• Comparative study between nations or regions, cultures and industries
• Creativity and screen idea development
• Conventions, norms and craft
• Screen-reading and the reception of the screen idea
• The history of screenwriting
• Cognitivism, psychology and psychoanalysis in relation to screenwriting

We also welcome articles suggesting new approaches to the study of screenwriting, and articles presenting new approaches to the teaching of screenwriting.

Articles, to include a 200 word abstract, should be sent by Monday 15th March 2010 to the Principal Editor Jill Nelmes (j.nelmes@uel.ac.uk), and to the Co-Editor Barry Langford (B.Langford@rhul.ac.uk). Please contact either Jill or Barry regarding any queries about suitability of subject or other requirements.