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April 04, 2008
CfP: Screened Sexuality: Desire in Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Cinema, 10/10-11/2008, Columbia U
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@columbia.edu by June 15, 2008.
Finalists will be contacted in early September, 2008.
Posted by danimia at April 4, 2008 09:03 AM