Call for Papers: Transregional Filmscapes in South Asia

Transregional Filmscapes in South Asia:  Practices, Politics, History
(Inaugural International Conference of SAMSNet: South Asian Media Scholars Network)

DATE:  January 6^th and 7^th, 2016
VENUE: Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Co-hosted by Dhaka University and Independent University of Bangladesh
CONVENERS:  AJM Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan (Dhaka University); Esha Niyogi De (UCLA); Elora Halim Chowdhury (UMass Boston).
PUBLICATION:  Conference participants will be invited to submit revised papers to be considered for publication in an edited volume of scholarly essays.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

South Asia is a region with diverse traditions of national, subnational, and transnational film, media, art, and culture.  This conference attempts to see the traditions of film, art, culture and media through the lens of “filmscapes.” It seeks to explore, on the one hand, how traditions of cinema and media arts have been created and shaped through the eras of history by politics, economics, and social relations, and, on the other, how film, media, and artistic practices continuously create, recreate, and reflect political, economic, and social processes.  The notion of filmscape offers three interrelated ways to think about film and media arts in this region:  (a) It considers South Asia as landscapes interconnected through linguistic and technological networks disseminating filmed images, narratives, information, and entertainment (through cinema, legitimate or pirated DVD/VCD circulation; satellite television, advertisements).  (b) It views the Subcontinent as a mobile geography of artists and industry experts wherein “the warp” of place-bound communities based on kinship tends to be pluralized by the “woof of human motion” (Arjun Appadurai) carrying different artistic traditions, influences, tastes, genres, and innovations.  (c) Finally, it takes a comparative approach to understand the plurality of film, media, art, and culture across the region of South Asia. 

We seek single paper or panel proposals that speak to one or more of the following themes (or address related issues):

• How do national, regional, and transregional political, economic, and social processes and practices shape and reshape the production, distribution, and consumption of film, art, culture, and the media in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka?
• How are transregional practices (subnational and transnational) of affiliation and conviviality embodied and aestheticized on film, (fiction, documentary), allied artistic forms (posters, trailers, blogs), and television across Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal?
• In what ways do regional and transregional embodiments and storylines inflect to the politics of identity and otherness in specific contexts and eras of South Asian history (for example, in pre- or post-Partition India and Pakistan; in Bangladesh or East Pakistan)?  How do these politics intersect with discourses of nationalism, gender, ethnicity, religion, language, caste, class, and social position? 
• How have different historical eras fostered transregional affiliations and collaborations through film, media, art, and culture?
• In what ways do technological innovations and network opportunities (for example, between the gramophone industry, film, and theater in early twentieth century Undivided India; or between the music, film, television, and advertisement industries at present) enable transregional exchanges?
• How do the networks of technology and capital (colonial, nationalist, neoliberal) enforce divisions and hierarchies in the region?
• How has the recent spate of globalization facilitated the rise of a transnational media and culture industries from this region (i.e., Bollywood)?
• What are the intersections of film, education, and advocacy?  In what ways are varied histories of struggles in the South Asian region communicated through film?  What roles do films play in social and political mobilization, transformation and activism around questions of justice and human rights? 

Due date of Abstracts for single papers and panel proposals:  November 1 2015. 

Please e-mail (a) the abstract and (b) a brief biography (one or two sentences) to ALL these three emails: abhuiyan@du.ac.bd; elora.chowdhury@umb.edu; de@humnet.ucla.edu.

Notification of acceptance:  November 30^th, 2015. 

Local hospitality will be provided for international participants.