[Bilimsel Haber] Cfp: IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters

[Onur Inal]

Call for Papers
IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters

A 4-days international and interdisciplinary conference

Kadir Has University Cibali Campus, Istanbul

1-4 June, 2011 (90% confirmed)

The conference IMAGES Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters will be
co-organized as a public 4-days international and interdisciplinary
conference by the University of Innsbruck research platform CEnT
– Cultural Encounters and Transfer and Kadir Has University
(Istanbul) in cooperation with CINEJ, the refereed online journal for
film and photography. The conference will be supported by the Austrian
Culture Forum Istanbul.

The conference will bring together senior scholars with PhD students,
and postdoctoral academics, without following the classical keynote
speaker pattern but rather inviting all speakers either to present
their research findings in 20-30 minute (paper) presentations plus 10
minutes for
discussion or in 120-150 minute panels (4-5 panellists).

There will be no parallel sessions. All sessions will be plenary sessions.

There will also be room provided for presentations of creative works
(artistic student works) focussing on the conference topic.
The conference language is English.

Conference coordinators are:
Assoc. Prof. (Privatdozentin) Dr. Veronika Bernard (University of
Innsbruck, Innsbruck/ Austria) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Serhan Oksay
(Kadir Has University, Istanbul/ Turkey), Dr. Vedat Akman (Kadir Has
University, Istanbul/ Turkey)

The official conference blog address is: (under
construction)http://images-1.over-blog.org

The official conference e-mail address is: images-1 at gmx.at

Deadline for paper and panel proposals is: 1 March, 2011

Deadline for artistic student works proposals is: 1 March, 2011

Paper and panel proposals have to include a 150 words abstract and a
150 words Bio.

Artistic student works proposals have to include a 150 words abstract
and a 50 words Bio.

Please, send your proposals to the official conference e-mail address:
images-1 at gmx.at

Proposers will be informed about acceptance of their proposal within 1
week after receipt.

The conference IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters is is
designed to be an interdisciplinary project on cultural encounters,
poverty and migration.

Within this thematic frame the conference deals with the discourse of
cultural encounters in the context of social co-existence. The project
defines "discourse of cultural encounters"; as the discourse within
the context of cultural encounters and as the discourse on cultural
encounters. With the discourse in situations of cultural encounters
the project focuses on everyday-life discourse; with the discourse on
cultural encounters the focus is on both academic and everyday-life
discourse. The project deals with verbal and non-verbal communication.

IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters  adapts a cultural
studies definition of the term “culture”. Cultural studies
define culture by embracing the idea of the group. Very simply said,
culture is the sum of all the features and ways of behaviour people
show and adapt deliberately in order to become distinct from others
and to form their specific identities. Consequently, a person can be
part of several cultures. You may be born into a culture – or
you may deliberately join a culture; you may actively design a culture
– or you can rather passively be part of a culture; you can
decide to leave a culture – or you can take efforts to change a
culture (from the inside or from the outside). Following this idea, e.
g. teenagers can design cultures actively and can be passively part of
other cultures at the same time – as old people, migrants, the
rich and the poor can be. Social classes may form cultures, just as
religions and/ or ideologies may do.

IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters  also includes
perspectives on cultural phenomena taken by communication studies, and
defines migration as a process of people moving across and within
state borders for various reasons. The project starts from the idea
that the images you form (of you and of others) essentially shape
relations and communication between both individuals and communities,
and at the same time are their results. Images are taken as reality by
humans. Plato has explained his theory of a relative reality, i. e. of
the ways images are formed, in his text "Allegory of the Cave";.
Contemporary communication studies introduce images (as the images an
individual holds of his or her own self and the images others form of
you) to a communicative system formed of values, evaluation and
selective perception. No matter which my values are, as a whole they
build that very system by which I evaluate and judge the ways others
act, look and speak in order to find out whether they fit in with my
values. In case they do there is the realistic chance of a positive
and fruitful communicational process; in case they do not,
communication will go wrong and end soon; in a comparatively
unspectacular way by cutting communicational ties or in a rather
dramatic way by leading into conflict.

The project IMAGES; Films as Spaces of Cultural Encounters  defines
cultural encounters as cultural contacts, which include all possible
outcomes. The project does not share positions which identify cultural
encounters with cultural contacts which exclusively motivate genuinely
positive and fruitful intercultural processes following the
intercultural definition of the term. "IMAGES"; identifies cultural
contacts also with actions and reactions which may escalate and end in
conflict: just think of the cultural provocation; the cultural
misunderstanding you are not aware of; the claim made by one culture
to culturally “educate” other cultures; the cultural
prejudice. In doing so the project considers the fact that the images
we create of others are subject to selective perception: We see what
we prefer to see. This is true of the positive as well as of the
negative.

Adapting this context to the conference topic, paper and panel
proposals may include all topics analyzing films as spaces of cultural
encounters from a cultural studies perspective in general, and from an
inter-cultural, multi-cultural, trans-cultural, semiotic,
communication centred, linguistic, sociological, historical,
comparative studies, educational, and political perspective in
particular, and from all related perspectives.

Sessions may focus on the following issues but are also open to
further thematic fields deriving from paper proposals received:

- ethnicity and the national issue in pre- and post-colonial films

- gender, age, and ethnicity in (mass)entertainment films

 - the image of the outsider and the outcast

- the image of mainstream society

- the enemy vs. the friend in secret agent and action films produced
during and after the cold war period

- the idea of co-existence in block buster animation films

 - the identity issue in films by directors/ authors of migrant background

 - prize-winning films and their cultural messages

 - ethnicity, gender, age and the idea of co-existence in advertising/
promotion clips

 One evening session will be open for artistic student works focussing
on the conference topic.