Conference: Screened Sexuality: Desire in Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Cinema (October 10-11, 2008, Columbia U) CALL FOR PAPERS

[Andrey Shcherbenok]

Call for Conference Papers

 

Screened Sexuality: Desire in Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Cinema

 

Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Harriman Institute, Department of
Slavic Languages and Literatures

Columbia University, October 10-11, 2008

 

The close association between cinema and sexual desire has been established
since the inception of cinematography. Set at the juncture of secrecy and
exhibitionism, cinema provides a powerful medium for both the orchestration
of spectatorial desire and reflection on human sexuality, which, at least
since the works of Christian Metz and The Screen theorists, have become a
subject of sustained scholarly analysis. Studies of individual film genres
have shed light on the staging of sexual desire in topoi ranging from
thriller plots to melodramatic mise-en-scene, while, starting with the works
of Linda Williams, the study of the cinematic representation of the sexual
act has also become firmly entrenched in cinema studies.

 

At the same time, studies of sexual desire in a given cinematic tradition
cutting across the boundaries of genres and theories remain scarce, and the
field of Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet cinema is not an exception.
Although there are a number of works on the representation of femininity,
masculinity and gender politics in this cinematic tradition, few scholars of
the subject address sexual desire per se. Even when desire is addressed,
existing studies tend to put the stress upon the ways (apparently "natural")
sexuality is repressed, "perverted" or appropriated, mainly for political
purposes, rather than upon the cinematic mechanisms that create a sexual
dynamic between diegetic characters or the spectator and the screen.

 

This conference aims to explore the ways sexual desire is articulated in and
constituted by cinema. While realizing that sexuality is implicated in a
potentially unlimited number of phenomena, many of which find their
reflection in films, we solicit papers that focus specifically on sexual
desire and address it in medium-specific and theoretically sophisticated
ways. The boundaries of the cinematic material to be discussed, on the
contrary, will be left open within the broad expanse of Russian, Soviet and
Post-Soviet space: we encourage papers that juxtapose cinematic desires from
that space with those of other cinematic traditions, papers that combine
close readings of individual films with reflections on the limits of Western
theories of cinematic sexuality, and papers that trace the continuities and
discontinuities in the way cinematic desire is represented, aroused, and
transformed across time and space in the region.

 

Please, send your abstract (300 words) and CV to Andrey Shcherbenok at
avs2120 at columbia.edu by June 15, 2008. 

Finalists will be contacted in early September, 2008.


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