Call for Papers
SHAKESPEARE AND TECHNOLOGY 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: Shakespeare Films and Science
Films and television adaptations of Shakespeare often herald the artistic achievements of technology. George
Méliès’s Hamlet (1907) and The Tempest (1913) capitalized on the visual magic of editing and placed special
effects at the center of filmmaking. In 1948, Laurence Olivier shot Hamlet with Dickinson’s slick monochromatic
approach to cinematography, perfecting the Black-and-White medium. And Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet, by contrast,
reveled in color and texture, dramatizing the full text(s) on screen, yielding a DVD bonanza for pause-play
audiences. Other Shakespeare films have incorporated technology in radical and provocative ways. How has this
technology shaped our understanding of Shakespeare? And how have Shakespearean texts, in turn, influenced
the evolution of 20th-century film technology?
This area investigates the social, cultural, historical interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays as portrayed through
film and television. Presentations may feature analyses of individual films and/or TV programs, surveys of
documents related to the production of films, or investigations of history, culture, and society as explored through
Shakespearean films. Genres might include classic films, Hollywood blockbusters, TV programs or mini-series,
docudramas, newsreels and broadcast media, war films, national cinemas, music videos, avant-garde films, direct
cinema, and stage performances attempting to interpret Shakespeare’s plays.
Paper topics might include dramatized science, English civil or overseas wars, national security and insecurity,
ethics and morals, reel representations of theatrical mechanism, cinematic innovations (e.g., film editing, mise-enscène, moving cameras, visual spectacle, or settings) versus theatrical designs (e.g., tiring-house, trap door,
heavens, huts, raised platform, or canopied state), adaptation, society, magic versus witchcraft, myths,
government and institutions, politics, ideologies, health, safety, environment, gender, ethnicity, race, class, etc.
Please send your 200-word proposal by August 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Fan-yu (Anita) In, Lecturer
Feng Chia University
No. 100, Wenhwa Rd., Seatwen, Taichung,
Taiwan 40724, R.O.C.
Email: anitabrucy@hotmail.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).