Fwd: CFP - Teaching Transnational Cinema and Media: Politics and Pedagogy

From: Bennett, Bruce <[email protected]>

Call for Papers

TEACHING TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA AND MEDIA: POLITICS AND PEDAGOGY
Edited Collection
Co-editors: Bruce Bennett (Lancaster University, UK) and Katarzyna
Marciniak (Ohio University, USA)


This proposed edited collection will focus on the analysis of transnational
cinema (also referred to in different contexts as “border cinema,” “cinema
of migration,” or “cinema of displacement”) in conjunction with specific
pedagogical challenges such cinema/media evoke in the classroom.  Coming to
the foreground in the early 2000s, the rubric of transnational cinema has
galvanized film and media studies, drawing our attention to diasporic and
“accented” filmmaking (Naficy), but also challenging us to think about
cinema beyond the restrictive scope of the nation. For various reasons,
since 2000 there has emerged a rich archive of new films that exemplify
transnational cinema.  Examples from around the globe include, for
instance, Amreeka (2009), Babel (2006), Before Night Falls (2000), Biutiful
(2010), Children in No Man’s Land (2008), Dirty Pretty Things (2002), The
Gatekeeper (2002), Gran Torino (2008), Goodbye Lenin (2003), In This World
(2002), Last Resort (2000), Machete (2010), Paradise Now (2005), Persepolis
(2007), Silent Waters (2003), Sleep Dealer (2008), The Syrian Bride (2004),
The Visitor (2007), or Unveiled (2005). Collectively, these films engage
with issues related to immigrant identities, transnational encounters,
foreignness and citizenship, the politics of visibility, terrorism,
legality, race and racism. National borders emerge in these films as both
violent geopolitical constructs and abstractions related to ideas of
difference, otherness, travel, migration, neo-liberal capitalism,
neo-colonialism and transcultural translation.

As the field of transnational cinema and media studies has been developing,
scholars of cinema and media have not thus far turned their systematic
attention to pedagogical practices. Discussions of teaching practices occur
but they are mainly located in the fields of rhetoric, education and
communication, or, occasionally, in gender studies. As more film scholars
engage with transnational cinema in the classroom, our goal is to explore
the complexities of teaching with and about such cinema, addressing such
questions as: What happens when our students encounter the “foreignness” of
various films, texts, and ideas in the classroom? How might teachers make
the topics raised in transnational texts – national (un)belonging, racial
tensions, cross-cultural encounters, difference, intimacy and family, the
politics of anger – relevant, even urgent, to our students, a lot of whom
have not knowingly brushed against experiences of immigration and
foreignness? How do we avoid “consumerist” emotionality in teaching such
complex topics? How might one implicate “the local” in “the global” and
encourage students to see beyond their own borders of social and cultural
contexts? How might we imbricate the transnational into one’s pedagogical
practices so that issues of foreignness, migration, and dislocation begin
to produce what we call “affective openings,” that is, an openness toward
new ways of thinking about resistance to oppressive forms of phobic
nationalisms and exclusionary practices of citizenship?

We hope to include a variety of theoretical perspectives from scholars with
experience of teaching in diverse locations. We invite contributions that
consider innovative pedagogies and think critically about such embodied
experiences as spectatorial identification or disidentification and
estrangement, spectatorial consumption of foreignness and “otherness,”
culturally-mediated desire for “proper” representations of immigration,
migration, or foreignness, or what Elspeth Probyn calls “affective
reactions” in the classroom and their “management.” We also invite
contributions that reflect upon the value of transnational cinema as
educational tool or ‘weapon’  (Solanas and Getino), and the institutional
politics of teaching and working in this area within universities and
colleges in an increasingly neo-liberal global context and in the face of
the “post-ideological” turn in many arts, humanities and social science
disciplines.

Please submit a 500-word abstract and a short bio by September 15, 2013 to
Bruce Bennett ([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>)
and Katarzyna Marciniak ([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>).



Katarzyna Marciniak
Professor and Co-Editor of Global Cinema
Transnational Studies
Department of English
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701





Dr Bruce Bennett

Director of Film Studies

Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts

Lancaster University

Bailrigg

Lancaster LA1 4YW

United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1524 594753

http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/bruce-bennett(6431f861-5056-4ff7-a02d-7f8c8726fb7d).html

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