CFP: Queer Mythologies (6/1/12; 9/26-30/12)

From: Cynthia Miller <[email protected]>

CALL FOR PAPERS
“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths”
An area of multiple panels for the Film & History Conference on “Film and
Myth”
September 26-30, 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
Deadline: June 1, 2012

Movies and television are one important way that many of us learn about
gender and sexuality. The stories we see played out on the large or small
screen tell us – explicitly or implicitly – what it means to be male or
female, what it means to be in love, what the narrative possibilities are
for constructing a life and forming relationships with other people. Too
often in film history, gay and lesbian lives have been mythologized – in
films from Cruising to Boys Don’t Cry to Brokeback Mountain – as lonely,
desperate, and destined for a bad end, a trajectory famously catalogued by
Vito Russo in The Celluloid Closet. Queer lives are often positioned as
opposite “normal,”  heterosexual lives. Yet other – queer – mythologies are
possible: from Hedwig’s re-imagining of the origin of love myth in Hedwig
and the Angry Inch, to Omar and Johnny happily splashing each other at the
end of My Beautiful Laundrette—certain films find ways to re-construct
dominant mythologies and perhaps define new ones. How do films, TV, and
online media perpetuate, subvert, or otherwise engage with these and other
myths concerning sexuality and gender?

This area, comprising multiple panels, will treat all aspects of myths
concerning sexuality, gender, and queerness in film, television, and
on-line media. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the
following:

Coming Out Stories
Romantic Mythologies
Classical Mythology Queered
Politics and Sex: From Myth to Public Policy
The “Gay Gene”: Science and Gender
“It Gets Better”: On-line Mythologizing
Mythologies of the Closet
Either/Or: The Myth of Gay or Straight

Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also
welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information,
including an e-mail address, for each presenter. Please e-mail your
200-word proposal by June 1, 2012:

Pamela Demory, Area Chair, 2012 Film & History Conference
“Queer Mythologies: Untangling Sex and Gender Myths”
University of California, Davis
Email: [email protected]