A Couple of Relevant CFPs

CFP – REFRACTORY: A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA SPECIAL ISSUE: TRAVERSING NARRATIVE MEDIA
The online journal REFRACTORY is seeking contributions regarding narrative in cinema, television and new media. We invite a variety of approaches and topics, but are particularly interested in essays that explore new areas and objects of narrative study, or offer new perspectives on existing debates.For example, certain theorists have suggested that narrative is increasingly displaced in the age of digital media, or that narrative’s claim on early cinema has been overstated. These debates intertwine with arguments regarding the depletion of narrative’s influence within postmodern image culture. How do these arguments relate to what may appear to be, from some perspectives, the strange perseverence of narrative in contemporary culture? How is narrative reframed within that culture, and how do shifts in our conception of narrative alter our understanding of existing debates and texts?

The potential scope of analysis is very broad: published essays may offer close analysis of individual works, for example, or address wider theoretical or historical questions.

Possible areas for consideration:
o Narrative aesthetics.
o Time/space and narrative.
o Narrative and modernity/postmodernity.
o Memory/history and narrative.
o Narrative and early cinema.
o Narrative and digital media/computer games.
o Television narratives.
o Narrative and the DVD format.
o Literary adaptation and narrative.
o Revisiting narrative theory.

Please submit completed articles of 3,000-7,000 words to the guest editor Allan Cameron (a.cameron5@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au) electronically as a rich text format document by July 31 2006. Articles should be formatted using the Chicago Author-Date System (see Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed). Refractory is a fully refereed journal. All submissions will be anonymously peer reviewed before acceptance.

Allan Cameron
Cinema Studies Department
The School of Art History, Cinema, Classics and Archaeology The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia Refractory website:
http://www.ahcca.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/

CALL FOR PAPERS
Videogames and Cinema (edited collection of essays + conference, Italy)

Deadline: September 1, 2006

We are currently seeking for essays that analyze the interplay between videogames and cinema for a a book provisionally titled Videogames and cinema. Digital play, screen pleasures, This edited collection will be published in Italy in Winter 2006 in the ongoing “videoludica.game culture series” [www.videoludica.com].

The emphasis will be on videogames rather than cinema, that is, we would like to focus on the way digital games expand, reinvent, and/or subvert film narratives.

Scholars might productively borrow models from such fields as game studies, film studies, television studies, cultural studies, popular culture, economics, and psychology.

Some of the topics might include:

-Transmedia storytelling; remediation
– Close-readings of game adaptations of popular films (e.g. Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Star Wars, The Godfather, Lord of the Rings, etc).
– Phenomenology of playing vs. movie viewing, gamer vs. spectator, forms of engagement with the text(s).
– Videogames as a spectatorial practice [for instance, machinima/replays/game videos]
– Comparative studies of film/game communities
– Comparative analyses of film/game genres (for instance, the horror film vs. survival horror game)
– Marketing/branding games based on films

Other related topics may be accepted at the editor’s discretion.
Revised/expanded versions of essays that have already been published in English might also be considered.

Interested scholars should email their contact information and a 1000 word abstract (in English or Italian) to mbittanti@libero.it by July 30th 2006.

Please keep in mind when writing your abstract that these essays should be chapter length with a target word count of 5,000+ words. The final draft should be submitted not later than September 1, 2006 via email (as a Word document attachment to mbittanti@libero.it). Accepted formats:
MLA, Chicago, APA.

Questions and comments should also be e-mailed to mbittanti@libero.it.

The publication of “Videogames and cinema. Digital play, screen pleasures” will be followed by a conference on digital games and film at IULM University in Milan, Italy. The event will take place sometime in Spring 2007.

Important Dates:

Abstract Paper Submission Due: July 30th 2006 Full Paper Submission Due: September 1, 2006 Conference on game/film: Spring 2007