Call for Papers

- Call for Papers -

Michael Powell Centenary Conference

Sept. 2/3/4^th 2005 (deadline for proposals Nov 30th 2004)

Centre for Creative and Performing Arts, University of Wales, Bangor

Plenary speakers: Ian Christie, (Lesley Stern, John Ellis)

This conference marks the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Michael Powell, writer, producer and director. Alongside the renewed critical and academic interest in Powell’s work over the last quarter century, film scholarship has developed new approaches and new objects of study. Proposals are invited for papers tackling any aspect of Powell’s work directly or drawing on his work to engage with wider cultural or theoretical interests. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

- Powell’s partnership with Pressburger;

- Those who influenced Powell or were influenced by him (within and beyond film culture);

- The relationship between Powell and other directors, writers and artists;

- Powell and Pressburger’s collaborators (composers, designers, actors, cinematographers, dancers, producers) and their use of literary source material;

- Powell’s position within paradigms of regional, national, continental and global cinema;

- Constructions of femininity, masculinity, sexuality, class, race, national/exilic/diasporic identities;

- Themes: the orient; landscape; memory; home, history, war, art;

- Spectatorship, spectacle, and voyeurism; camp and kitsch;

- Genres: the ‘art film’; the war film, melodrama, documentary, epic, fantasy, biopic, masque, musical/opera/operetta, comedy;

- Powell’s early career; his late career;

- Powell as a writer;

- Unrealised projects;

- The critical, popular or sub-cultural reception of Powell’s work;

Submissions are invited from scholars and students of film, media, gender and cultural studies, history and art history, music, history, literature, sociology and cultural geography. Proposals from postgraduates are welcome.

Brief abstracts (300 words) for 20 minute papers, with a 1 page c.v., should be sent to Andrew Moor, Dept. of English, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG, Wales. Alternatively, email your abstract and c.v. to els604@bangor.ac.uk (please mark your email subject line “Powell Centenary Conference”).

Proposals may also be considered for panels (of 3 papers): these should include panel title, brief description of panel theme, name of the panel chair, 1-page abstracts of each paper and contact details for each presenter (name, institutional affiliation postal address and email address).

Andrew Moor, Sept, 2004