FLUID FRONTIERS: MARGINS AND CONFLUENCES IN LITERATURE, FILM, MEDIA, AND CULTURE
October 2 – 4, 2014
University of Montana: Missoula, Montana USA
This year’s conference focuses on dimensions of fluidity found at margins and meeting points of literature, film, media, genre, and culture. While proposals addressing these topics in the context of the American West are especially encouraged, presentations touching on any aspect of fluidity, frontier, and/or other physical and conceptual spaces that represent intersections of literature, film, media, genre and/or culture are welcome.
The conference keynote speakers are Montana film-maker Andrew Smith (Winter in the Blood, 2013; The Slaughter Rule, 2002) and Montana film scholar and film-maker Dr. Paul Monaco (John Dahl and Neo-Noir: Examining Auteurism and Genre, 2010; A History of American Movies: A Film-By-Film Look at the Art, Craft, and Business of Cinema, 2010; The Sixties: 1960 – 1969 from The History of American Cinema Series, 2000).
Thematic suggestions for presentation proposals include (but are not limited to):
Re-visiting concepts of the American frontier or frontiers as a whole
Articulations of cultural resistance or cultural adaptation (including indigenous, Native, and colonial)
Notions of nature, wilderness, and origin in literature, film, media, and culture
Stories from rural margins and cultural edges
Urban cultural confluences
Intersections of cultural and national identity
Narrative flow and continuum in differing media and genre
Adaptation in emerging media
New technological frontiers in film and media
Explorative views on gender and sexuality
Negotiating ideas of source
Genres in flux
Please send inquiries or presentation proposals (200-300 words) by July 31, 2014 to: Marton Marko at marton.marko@mso.umt.edu.