Call for Papers
RE-ENACTMENTS Area
2008 Film & History Conference
"Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond"
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Third-Round Deadline: August 1, 2008
AREA: Re-enactments
For centuries, re-enactments—in the absence of camera footage or technology—have
been used to visualize aspects of science and history. While they provide an answer to the
question of what to show, re-enactments do more than just fill in for "real"
documentation. They offer an opportunity to dramatize scientific concepts or the
discovery of them, to demonstrate theories and applications, to interpret cultural turning
points or other decisive historical events, and to explain, in general, the who, why, and
how of science.
Re-enactments are made through both live action and animation. Errol Morris's A Brief
History of Time uses chickens and eggs to raise questions about Stephen Hawkings's
theories. Episodes of PBS's NOVA series use actors, costumes, sets, and other aspects of
what normally is considered fiction filmmaking to recreate historical and scientific
moments. Animation provides another avenue through which to render abstract concepts
into more comprehensible explanations. One sophisticated online example is Rob
Bryanton's Imagining the Tenth Dimension, which walks through 10 theoretical
dimensions of time, at least according to Bryanton's theories.
This area investigates the roles of re-enactments in scientific media. Presentations may
examine recreations through their techniques, their purposes, their interpretations, and
their explanatory potential and powers, just to name a few approaches. Presentations may
evaluate re-enactments within particular texts, compare similar re-enactments across
various texts and media, align re-enactments with other documentation of historical
events, and situate re-enactments in cultural and social contexts. Many presentations will
focus on subgenres within documentary, such as scientific, propaganda, nature, newsreel,
instructional, biographical, compilation, ethnographic and anthropological, and even
mockumentary media. However, presentations also may examine how fiction media
represent the same events, such as Oliver's Stone's re-enactments of the Zapruder film for
JFK.
Please send your 200-word proposal by August 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Heather McIntosh, Chair of the Re-enactments Area
Department of Communication
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
Email: hmm160@gmail.com
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must
submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for third-round proposals: August 1, 2008
This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial Film & History
Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film and History. Speakers will
include founder John O'Connor and editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate
the transfer to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of
Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering
Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at
Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the
World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For updates and
registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website
(www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).