COMPARISONS IN NON-FICTION SCIENCE FILMS AND TELEVISION 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: Comparisons: Science / Medical Films And Television
The time is ripe to begin to synthesize a broad historical account of non-fiction science
films and television. Up until recently, most historians and media critics have tended to
analyze science in film and television through individual case studies, through microhistories of individual films or programmes, or through close accounts of singular image
artifacts (as with the series of articles by the late Roger Silverstone and his book on
Britain's BBC2 mainstay "Horizon"). Other studies look at how science affects periods
or genres, such as "New Deal" films or animal films, or at how science in film and
television is shaped by different national cultures.
But, whether for the sake of broader understanding of the cultural history of science, or to
enhance scientific citizenship, or to enhance pedagogy, it is necessary to build a broader
account of the history of science in non-fiction moving image media. Accordingly, this
area invites contributions that contain comparisons between different non-fiction
representations of science, technology and medicine, or alternatively that deliberately
offer themselves up for comparative treatment.
Possible Comparative Questions:
- Have co-production deals dissolved international differences in science television
documentary style?
- Is television (or film) documentary influenced by scientists more in some periods or
places than in others?
- Is science and medical documentary drama more significant in some eras than others?
If so, why?
- Do some medical specializations get better coverage in one country or era and not in
another?
- What similarities and differences are there between health-education films from
different countries and regimes in the same period?
- Have nature films been effectively the same since 1900?
- Do different kinds of audiences watch science films in different countries?
Comparative topics:
-
Scale in science films: microscopic vs. macroscopic imaging
Clinical vs. Public Health films
Brain vs. Heart
Differential depictions of men and women, of different races, of animals vs. people.
Please send initial enquiries at any time or a 300-word proposal by August 1, 2008 to
Oliver Gaycken
Department of English
Temple University
ogaycken@temple.edu
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).