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Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 35.1 (2005) 1-8


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The Editor's Reflections and Reports

Peter C. Rollins

We of Film & History have been busy since the last issue of the journal and here are some of the highlights of the past few months.

Film & History Conference News for November 11-14, 2004 Dolce Conference Center (near DFW airport)

The "War in Film, TV, and History" conference for November of 2004 was a wonderful experience for all involved. Such meetings are always exciting to plan because we have a chance to talk back and forth with scholars across the globe. Indeed, this meeting attracted participants from Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Israel. Most of the participants were professors and independent scholars from the United States, but a significant percentage of the speakers brought an authentically international experience to the paper sessions.


Click for larger view		 Figure 1
The Dolce Center

The meeting took place at the Dolce/American Airlines Conference Center near the Dallas Airport, a location designed to keep people close to the meeting, but not so isolated that the participants could not attend a Dallas Willie Nelson concert or take a train ride directly to the Dealey Plaza to view the John F. Kennedy Museum and Memorial at a historic site that has been the focus of many documentary and fiction films. For the meeting, we used 16 meeting rooms concurrently and had available to us a 350-seat theatre with comfortable, bright red seats to make participants comfortable without putting them to sleep. Scholars, when not served by catered events covered by their registration, were free to select meals from a food court with nine different stations and many were delighted by the low cost of the food available. The complex included a Falcon Wing and a Mercury Wing with meeting rooms so spread out that many of us had to rely on our floor plans on the back cover of the program to find our way; this hobbling participant used a "Rascal Scooter" to get himself across hard, cement floors poorly concealed beneath carpeting. The cart was so much fun and so useful that the facility purchased it from the rental company at the end of the meeting.

This meeting was a special success due to the involvement of the Literature Film Association and many contributors to the Literature/Film Quarterly. During the planning phase, Jim and Anne Welsh, the pioneers of the journal established contact and written agreements with us. As the meeting approached, David Kranz (Dickinson University) became the main liaison. Working independently and with us, the Literature Film Association formed and contributed panels of value with a literary as well as a cinematic twist. Overall, approximately 40 members of the association gave papers or participated in panels, making up 10% of the attendance, but contributing far more than their numbers would indicate. We are especially grateful to Anne Welsh for her constant help at the registration desk throughout the meeting; her experience in organizing meetings was so important to the smooth functioning of that activity. We certainly enjoyed the contributions of the group and wish it well when it meets next year. (The Literature Film Association is planning the 2005 conference for October 13-16 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. For more information, see the association's web site at http://www.salisbury.edu/lfq/ or contact David Kranz at kranz@dickinson.edu)

Our plan for the meeting was to alternate panel sessions with viewing opportunities and plenary meetings, hoping that this variety would allow for special focus points while maintaining a group identity as a meeting. Participants visited a book exhibit featuring the volumes of many publishers and many books were sold. The University Press of Kansas was represented by Mike Briggs, the Editor-in Chief; McFarland Press mounted a large offering of reference books and texts for the classroom. Finally, Scholar's Choice sent a team to offer volumes from multiple presses, to...

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