DWFTH 5 revised for 2021: New call for papers–‘Histories of Women in Film and Television: Then and Now.’

A Hybrid Conference: July 10 – 11, 2021 (virtual and on-campus at Maynooth University, Kildare, Ireland) Supported by Women’s Film & Television History Network, this call for papers is made in collaboration with ‘Women and the BBC’, a special themed issue of Critical Studies in Television.

 

The year 2020 has caused a great deal of sorrow, anxiety and difficulty across the world. With health and safety of paramount concern, conferences and research events – including the planned Doing Women’s Film and Television History conference – have been either impossible to hold in-person or, given the challenges presented by the need to sustain teaching and student welfare, deprioritized. As we look towards 2021, we understand that social distancing measures and travel limitations will possibly continue. With this in mind, we plan to host a hybrid conference as an outlet for our research that will enable us to share our scholarship with others, form connections and offer potential for collaboration. If national and institutional public health measures allow, the conference will combine on-campus and virtual events. While virtual conferences present new technical and communicative challenges, we also see the opportunities that this type of conference affords. Not requiring travel, it both reduces expense and can broaden networks of scholars. The conference will be formed of pre-recorded talks, virtual live panels, live workshops, keynote talks with Q&As, and where possible, on-campus events. The conference is formed of two areas: 1) following the cancellation of this year’s ‘Doing Women’s Film & Television History 5’, we seek papers for the revised 2021 format that reflect the themes of diversity and transnationalism listed below; 2) in anticipation of the BBC centenary, we seek research on histories of women and the BBC, both past and in the making. Each strand is detailed below. If your proposals offered for the 2020 conference fall into either of these strands, please feel free to resubmit.

1. Doing Women’s Film & Television History goes virtual

We are interested in topics focusing diversity and transnational histories, including but not limited to:

  • Women’s film and television histories at the margins of institutions and of research
  • Global women’s film and television histories
  • Researching women in film and television during the pandemic and times of crisis
  • International and comparative perspectives on women in film and television
  • Histories of women’s creative practice, production and technical work in various national, regional, or local contexts, including transnational film and television, migration and diasporas
  • Approaches to histories of women’s indigenous production, including Third Cinema and grassroots film and television production
  • Motherhood and film and televisions’ working practices
  • Histories of motherhood represented in film and television
  • Debates and controversies in women’s film and television histories

Please submit proposals of 250 words along with the paper’s title and a 50-word biography in one Pdf document to dwfthv@gmail.com by January 15th 2021.

2. The BBC at 100: Women and the BBC, then and now

Recent controversies around equal pay, misogynistic abuse towards BBC personalities and a lack of female representation at the top of the corporation suggest that the institution has far to go in matters of gender equality. How might we characterise the relationship between corporate and on-screen representation of women? And how has the BBC responded to changing socio-cultural attitudes and discourses defining women over time?

We are particularly interested in contributions that address the historical and contemporary stories of female workers at the BBC; that analyse how BBC programming gives representation to women’s lives, serves female audiences or explores experiences of genders and sexualities.

Selected papers will be invited to publish in the special themed issue of Critical Studies in Television in Autumn 2022 on ‘Women and the BBC’. Please submit proposals of 250 words along with the paper’s title and a 50-word biography in one Pdf document to sarah.arnold@mu.ie, Hannah.Andrews@edgehill.ac.uk and j.mccabe@bbk.ac.uk by January 15th 2021.

Hosting of this conference is supported by Maynooth University and ‘The Motherhood Project’ at Maynooth University.