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  • Director’s Introduction

The response to our 2008 conference, held in Chicago from October 30 to November 2, was extraordinary. Participants from around the world shared insightful and important scholarship on the treatment of science in film and television. Our plenary speakers—Wheeler Winston Dixon, Roger Launius, and Sidney Perkowitz—offered illuminating commentary on the nature of science, the evolution of film genres, and the culture of science-related television and cinema. Our area chairs were especially productive, four of them having earned Film & History’s Director’s Award for service accomplishments: Christoph Laucht, Tobias Hochscherf, Chris Hansen, and Lawrence Baron.

The Center for the Study of Film and History is now planning the international conference for 2010. We will investigate the historical evolution of “love” in film and television, from love of God and country to love of parents and partners, from the shifting conceptions of beauty and admiration to the varieties of loyalty and inspiration. If you wish to propose an area topic, the first-round deadline is June 1, 2009. We look forward to seeing you at the 2010 conference.

The 2010 Film & History conference will look at how love—as psychology, as dramatic principle, as historical agent, as cultural stage, as ethical standard—has been represented in film and television. How has the depiction of love defined a society or a period? Which people—or institutions or ideas or animals—have been promoted as subjects (or objects) of love, and which ones have not? In what ways do we love or not love because of film and television? How has the screen represented the love of country, the love of one’s neighbor, the love of God, or the love of family? How has it represented the repudiation or reformulation of love, and what are the historical ramifications?

Questions about the nature of love define not just couples or parents and their children but whole communities and nations, shaping their religions, their economic policies, their media programming, their social values, their most powerful fears and ambitions. Love in each era defines the struggles worth enduring and the stories worth telling, from Gone With the Wind and Casablanca to Hamlet and Cleopatra, from The Jazz Singer and The Sound of Music to The Graduate and Boogie Nights, from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Ten Commandments to Easy Rider and The Right Stuff, from The 400 Blows and Life Is Beautiful to Amelie and Muriel’s Wedding. This conference will examine the aesthetic representations of love on screen and will assess their historical, cultural, and philosophical implications.

The Center for the Study of Film and History invites proposals from prospective chairpersons of topic areas (under which multiple panels will be organized). Chairs are encouraged either to propose their own areas or to propose versions of the areas suggested below. (Each area should be related directly to film and/or television.)

  • Across the Tracks: Love and Class

  • Addictions, Compulsions, Obsessions

  • Affairs of Race

  • Agape: Faith, God, Mission

  • Animals of the Wild

  • Beasts of Burden…and Breakfasts

  • Broadway Motifs in Cinema

  • Cartoons and Pornography

  • Censorship and the Code

  • Charismatic Leaders

  • Citizen Love: Flag Wavers, Flag Burners

  • Classic and Classical: The Romance Genre

  • Cowboy and Cowgirl Love

  • Families and Society

  • Fetish and Function: The Love of Things

  • Flings and Fantasies

  • Fraternity and Sorority

  • Freudian Readings and Approaches

  • Hetero, Homo, Sapiens: Theories of Sexuality

  • Jane Austen on Screen

  • Laboratory Love: Documentary-Style Treatments

  • Love American Style

  • Love and Community

  • Love and Violence

  • Love Gone Awry

  • Lovers on the Side: Rogues and Tramps

  • Lust in Space: Science Fiction and Romance

  • Leitmotivs of Love: Music, Song, and Film

  • Mon Amour: French Kisses and French Misses

  • Office Romance

  • Pets and Companion Animals

  • Reality-TV Love: Bachelors and Bachelorettes

  • Responsible Love: Marriage and Parenthood

  • Romantic Comedies on Television

  • Romantic Dramas on Television

  • Separation, Divorce, Reconciliation

  • Sex and Love in Asian Contexts

  • Sex and Morality

  • Soul and Self: Love and Identity

  • Stereotypes: Old, Young, and Mid-Life Crises

  • Suicidal Lovers

  • Teachers and Students

  • Team Ethos: Buddy Films and Chick Flicks

  • The First Romantics: Italy on Screen

  • The Secret Agent: James Bond…or the Women

  • The Weight of History: Body Image and Love

  • Uniform Love: Military...

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