CALL FOR PAPERS - Global Intersections and Artistic Interconnections: Italian Cinema and Media across Times and Spaces. Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies - Second International Conference. The American University of Rome. 14-15 June 2019. Keynote Speaker: Professor Milly Buonanno, La Sapienza University. Intersections of local and global: transnational influences on the Italian road to serial TV storytelling

Since its inception in the mid-1950s, Italian domestic TV broadcasting and storytelling has established a close dialogue with national culture, identity and heritage. It would however be impossible to comprehensively account for the history and the peculiarities of Italian TV drama without bringing into the picture the ‘transnational factor’. Television storytelling in Italy has developed within a porous cultural space open to the influence of foreign art forms and creative media productions. National and non-national or transnational elements have met, co-existed and interacted frequently, albeit differently, within the television environment, helping to shape, maintain or modify the ‘Italian-ness’ of home-grown television fiction.

This holds particularly true for narrative serialization – long considered a lowbrow form of popular storytelling to be resisted and rejected. Based on these premises, the paper aims to address the influence of the ‘transnational factor’ on key moments – and key narratives (La piovra, 1980s; Un posto al sole, 1990s; Gomorra: la serie, 2000s) – along the difficult road to serialization traveled by Italian TV drama.

Plenary Addresses

Dr. Piera Detassis - Accademia del Cinema Italiano Premi David di Donatello, Ciak Magazine
Dr. Felice Laudadio - Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia
Dr. Roberto Stabile - International Department ANICA
Prof. Mario Morcellini - La Sapienza University, Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni
Prof. Giorgio Bertellini - University of Michigan

In line with the goal of the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, the Conference aims at responding to the emerging critical interdisciplinary approaches to Italian cinema and media in international contexts. This means to engage across disciplines, explore new ways to interpret artistic intersectionality and transmediality in global productions, look outside the established canon of Anglophone scholarship, and shape new paradigms for film and media studies.

One of the most significant traits of JICMS is its interest in diverse voices in academia in order to pave the way for transnational scholarship, and shift the axis of Italian cinema and media studies to reflect the multicultural and multilingual identities across the world. The championing of this diversity is evident in the range of articles, interviews, film and book reviews, film festival and conference reports exploring the points of junction between Italian cinema and Asian, Latin American, North American and European cinemas.

Another important trait of JICMS is its media component. The profound transformation undergone by the rapidly expanding media environment under the impact of digital technology, has led scholars in the field of media studies to elaborate new theoretical paradigms and methodological approaches to account for the complexities of a changing landscape of convergence and hybridization. The boundaries between cinema and media as art forms and fields of inquiry are increasingly hybridized too. Taking into account this evolving scenario, this Conference intends to provide an international arena for critical engagement with a wide range of issues related to the current Italian media environment.

Just like JICMS, the Conference wants to reach out to academics working in particular niches, and give their work a platform. Italian cinema and media turn to other countries’ productions for inspiration and vice versa. The lure of Italian cinema’s legends and the interest in revisiting its genealogy create bridges across global artistic languages in the effort to preserve harmonies and reconcile tensions. In moving away from mainstream pathways, JICMS and the Conference also intend to get Italian cinema and media studies out of their canonical silo, engage with diverse academic communities, build new conceptual frameworks, and promote research beyond Western and Eurocentric bases to foster a more globally-focused and representative corpus of scholarship.

With this Conference, JICMS intends to bring together scholars, authorities from the Accademia del Cinema Italiano Premi David di Donatello, the Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, ANICA, AGCOM, filmmakers, film and media professionals, journalists, film festival organizers, and students to facilitate a dialogue across critical approaches and creative practices.

With this CFP, the conference organizers invite proposals for single papers, pre-constituted panels and roundtables that would identify intersections and artistic interconnections shaping contemporary Italian cinema and media productions in a global world.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- The contemporaneity of Italian auteurs
- Environmentalism and Italian film
- Rhizomatic approaches to Italian film history
- Transnationality in Italian film
- Representations and constructions of identities from the perspectives of gender, ethnicity and nationalism
- Migrant and refugee filmmaking
- Migrant cinema: diaspora(s) and transnational mobilities, and the role of multilingualism and translation in coproductions
- Mobilities within and between diasporas
- Glocal Italy: production and representation of localism, regionalism and globalisation
- The new Italian documentary
- Italian sound studies
- Future directions for Italian film studies
- LGBTQ cinema
- Fellini for the New Millennium
- Productions and series in the field of literature (Ferrante’s cycle, Ammaniti’s first series, a sequel of The Young Pope)
- Historical and contemporary approaches to film remakes in Italy
- Regional film commissions
- Foreign productions in Italy
- Italian productions abroad
- Italian remakes of non-Italian films
- Foreign remakes of Italian films
- Unmade Italian silent films
- Abandoned or halted studio projects
- Abandoned Italian adaptations and screenplays
- Production, distribution and Italian film festivals
- (New) avant-garde, experimental and independent Italian film and digital video
- Italian cinematic intertextuality
- Italian digital cinema
- Virtual reality in Italian cinema
- Post-cinema
- Animation
- New perspectives on the history/archaeology of Italian cinema and other media
- The aesthetics of Italian cinema and other media technologies
- Infotainment: newspapers, magazines, radio and television news, all news channels, online information outlets, social media
- Emotainment: popular press, reality television, factual programming and talent shows, branding and advertising, online videos and spaces
- Politainment: electoral campaigns, spin doctoring, leadership building, political and public communication practices, talk shows, online engagement
- Edutainment: Radio and television shows, podcasts
- Media products and transmedia/transnational practices
- Hybridity and media borders
- Television and web seriality
- Electronic games across platforms and genres as well as ludic and serious online environments
- Old, new and residual media

Please send an abstract of 250 words plus a short bio of 100 words for single papers, or 350 words for panels (including the aims of the panel and summaries of each contribution specifying the names of filmmakers, artists, films, media etc.) followed by individual titles, panelists’ bios, current academic affiliation, and emails for pre-constituted panels with 3 speakers, or roundtables in Italian or in English in a word.doc format, no pdf. We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations (inclusive of film clips). We welcome presentations using both conventional tools and video-essay commentaries.

The languages of the conference are English and Italian. Abstracts for consideration should be submitted to the conference organizer Flavia Laviosa at [email protected]. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 30 September 2018. Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be sent out to authors by 31 October 2018.

Conference registration fee includes: 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches and a closing reception.

€ 110 before 15 March 2019 (presenters’ deadline for being included in the conference program)
€ 130 after 15 March 2019
€ 80 student

The registration fee will be paid to AUR. The registration website will be available in January 2019. Participants will receive a complimentary copy of JICMS, offered by Intellect. Selected papers will be considered for a special issue of JICMS.

The conference is organized by Flavia Laviosa (Wellesley College) in collaboration with Catherine Ramsey-Portolano (The American University of Rome), and is co-sponsored by AUR, Wellesley College and Intellect.

Post-conference tour To the Garden of Ninfa and Sermoneta: Sunday 16 June 2019. Day-trip to the Garden of Ninfa, one of the most beautiful gardens in the world. We leave from Piazza della Repubblica, in front of Repubblica Metro Station at 8:30am to arrive at Ninfa at 10:00am. After the guided tour of the Garden we transfer to the medieval town of Sermoneta. There we taste local products as cold cuts, cheeses, bruschette and olives. We also discover the ancient recipe of ‘Peschette al Tartufo’, little peaches immersed in truffle oil. At 1:30pm we have a guided tour of Sermoneta including a visit of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the Caetani Castle, built for the Annibaldi family in the early thirteenth century. The arrival in Rome is scheduled for 5:30pm. The guided visits are in Italian and all transfers are by private bus.

The €100 fee per person includes all services and will be paid to the travel agent. For more information, please contact: Eugenio Marchetti at: [email protected] or call (+39) 3341004351