CALL FOR A BOOK ON FILM AND DISABILITY:
THE PROBLEM BODY:
Portrayals of Disability, Illness, Obesity, and Age in Film
We seek papers for a book collection that will analyze the normative body as
spectacularly depicted in film. In particular, we are looking for papers
examining portrayals of bodies in all their problematic constructions:
disabled, ill, obese, old. Submissions should address variable determining
factors that define the problematic relationship between "normal" and
"abnormal" bodies.
We welcome selections that will contribute to the research fields of
Disability Studies, Body Criticism, and Film Studies by looking critically
at a range of problem bodies through the lens of disability. We do not wish
merely to introduce the disabled body, the ill body, or the elderly body as
the next overlooked critical frames within body criticism. Rather, we wish
to reveal through the visual dramatization of disability the problem
body as a complicated multiplication of physical and social problems that
demand rich discourse to advance thinking beyond the simple focus on either
this [adjective] body or that [adjective] body.
Our book seeks to bring together disparate essays that take on discourse
surrounding bodies through the promising field of disability and film, and
remedy readings of celluloid disability as merely and continually
metaphorical. We welcome essays that address any national cinema or
historical period, with careful attention to the filmic devices and
mechanisms that situate certain bodies as "other." We intend for "The
Problem Body" to integrate discourses about so-called anomalous bodies in
order to discuss their depictions as more than figurative, to view the
filmed body as more than just a metonymic repository for cultural
signification.
POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT RESTRICTED TO:
- Filmed Representations of Disability, Obesity, Age, Illness
- Documenting Problem Bodies
- Audience Reception to Problem Bodies on Film
- Filmic Constructions/Reconstructions of Disability as Ableist Spectacle
- The Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class with Disability
- The Intersection Between Culture, Sexuality, Nationality, and Disability
- Embodiment and Star Power in Disability Cinema
- Filmic Challenges to the Limits of Current Body Theory
- Disability Theory as Framework to Re-evaluate Film
Please notify us of your intention to submit by sending a title, a
2-sentence description, and contact information by October 26, 2001. Our
deadline for 300-word abstracts is January 21, 2002. We expect final papers
to be submitted in May 2002.
Feel free to contact us with comments or queries:
Sally Chivers (schivers@interchange.ubc.ca)
Nicole Markotic (markotic@ucalgary.ca)
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From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
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