Analytic Aesthetics and Film Studies
University of Warwick, October 26-27, 2018
Confirmed keynotes:
Dr Catharine Abell, Reader in Philosophy, The University of Manchester.
Dr Andrew Klevan, Associate Professor, Non-Tutorial Fellow and University Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Oxford.
https://aestheticsfilmstudies.weebly.com/
Although book-length philosophical treaties on film started appearing at least as early as the 1920s, it was only in the 1970s with Stanley Cavell’s work and in the 1980s with Noël Carroll’s contributions that film became a respectable object of philosophizing among Anglo-Saxon philosophers. Since then there has been a steady output of philosophical work on film followed by the appearance of journals which cherish analytic approaches to film including Film and Philosophy and Projections: A Journal for Movies and Mind. Recently, there has also been a number of annual or biannual conferences which explore film from a philosophical perspective including the Film-Philosophy conferences, the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image conferences and the International Conference on Philosophy of Film. None of these conferences, however, are devoted exclusively to analytic approaches to film. Moreover, when it comes to the relationship between film and philosophy the focus of these conferences is mostly on how philosophy can help better understand film with little or nothing on the influence going the other way.
“Analytic Aesthetics and Film Studies” will explore how film scholars and practitioners can contribute to the analytic aesthetics as much as how analytic aestheticians can contribute to our understanding of film. It welcomes analytic aestheticians working on film and film scholars and practitioners interested in contributing to the debates in analytic aesthetics.
Topics for papers and pre-constituted panels may include but are not limited to:
- Analytic aesthetics’ actual or potential contribution to film theory, history, criticism, or practice
- The potential or actual contribution of film theory, history, criticism, or practice to the analytic aesthetics
- The history of analytic aesthetics’ engagement with film
- The present-day status of analytic aesthetics in film studies
- The treatment of philosophical subjects in film (philosophers as filmmakers, filmmakers as philosophers, film-philosophy)
- Challenges from film history and theory to analytic accounts of representation in film (including both fiction and depiction)
- The role of film theory in the development of analytic aesthetics
- The nature of distinction between film theory and philosophy of film
- Moving images beyond the realm of films: TV series, video games, virtual reality, video art… How are they currently accounted for in analytic aesthetic and in film studies? How can the cooperation between the two disciplines improve the research on such moving images?
- Which films count as works of art? What does it mean for a film to be a work of art? What is the relationship between film as an art form and the art system as a whole? How can the dialogue between analytic aesthetics and film studies shed some light on these issues?
Please send proposals to conference organizers Dr Mario Slugan (Ghent University / University of Warwick) and Dr Enrico Terrone (Università di Torino / Collège d’études mondiales): aesthetics.film.studies@gmail.com. The deadline for receipt is Monday, 2 July 2018. Speakers will be notified of decisions by the end of July. There will be no conference fees.
The conference is open to both individual papers or pre-constituted panels (with 3 speakers each and a chair).
In the case of individual papers, please submit abstracts between 500 and 1000 words (references included) together with a title and 5 keywords. The abstracts should be prepared for blind review (with name, institutional affiliation, contact details, and the title of the proposal in a separate file).
In the case of pre-constituted panels, the conveners are asked to submit a panel proposal including the title, a 300- to 500-word justification for the panel and 300- to 500-word abstracts (references included) for each of the three presentations making up the panel accompanied by a title and 5 keywords. Also included should be names and institutional affiliation for the three presenters and the name, institutional affiliation, contact details, and institutional affiliation for the chair. Panel conveners will be also requested to conform to the Good Practice Policy making sure that at least two of the panellists (including the convener/chair) are female.
In line with the Good Practice Policy of the British Philosophical Association and the Society for Women in Philosophy, the conference organizers have already ensured gender parity among keynotes and will do their best to do so for the other conference delegates. To offset unconscious biases against accepting female work demonstrated in different fields in recent studies, the papers will be blind-reviewed. A growing number of studies has also shown that women are less likely to submit their work to conferences or journals because of the confidence gap, i.e. the internalization of the higher standards they are held to. To offset at least part of these problems, we wish to stimulate female attendance by allocating a portion of the conference funds to childcare costs. Following paper selection, therefore, we invite speakers to send us funding applications for nurseries and a crèche services (funds for altogether 10 full-day childcare services fees at the University of Warwick have been made available).
We hope for an edited volume to result from the conference. In case of publication the organizers as editors will also ensure that women are well represented.
The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 746619.