MCLLM Conference

The 18th annual
Midwest Conference on Language, Literature, and Media (MCLLM)
will be held April 9-10, 2010 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois.

Keynote speaker:
Dr. George Lakoff, University of California-Berkeley,
author of Metaphors We Live By (1980), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (1987), Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), The Political Mind : Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain (2008).

This year’s theme is Interdisciplinarity. As exemplified by Dr. Lakoff’s application of his theories across a variety of disciplines, investigation and education at the points of disciplinary intersection are becoming increasingly important in academia and our world at large.
We invite proposals for fifteen minute papers from scholars at all stages of their careers. Topics related to this year’s theme may include, but are not limited to, writing across the curriculum, linguistics and literature, cross-cultural film studies, technical communication, cognitive research and application, the construction of gender and ethnicity, language policy, and theories of knowledge creation; however, MCLLM also welcomes papers on all areas of language, literature, and media studies. Individual or panel (three to four people) proposals are welcome.

Deadline for submission has been extended to February 1, 2010.
Please include a cover page with your name, affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. Please submit your 250 word abstract as an attachment to mcllm@niu.edu.

mcllm@niu.edu
Department of English
Northern Illinois University
http://www.engl.niu.edu/mcllm/

Save UI Cinema & Comparative Literature

Below is a message from Prof. Corey Creekmur posted today on the SCMS website. As graduate of The University of Iowa's cinema program, I wanted to help spread the word. Discouraging to say the least.

Dear Alumni and Friends,

An ad hoc entity called the Provost's Task Force on Graduate Education and Selective Excellence has just recommended the elimination of the PhD program in Film Studies at the University of Iowa, along with the MA and PhD programs in Comparative Literature. It has also recommended that the MFA in Film and Video Production be moved to a newly proposed Division of Communications (with Journalism and Communication Studies), and that the MFA in Translation be moved to a newly proposed Division of World Languages and Cultures (with the foreign languages). These undesirable and illogical moves would in effect dismember the current Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature. Ours are not the only programs under threat, but ours is the only department that would be obliterated if the committee’s recommendations were to be followed.

The committee was made up of mostly non-Humanists, and it did its work mostly on the basis of statistics like time to degree, GRE scores of applicants, and years of support offered to grad students. It identified the placement of Iowa Film Studies graduates as "good," but did not note that our graduates can be found at many of the world's finest universities, including Yale, Brown, Harvard, and the University of Chicago, among many others. It did not employ any outside evaluators. It did not collect information on the work of faculty. It did not collect information on program costs (the members of the committee know very well that Humanities grad degrees are dirt cheap by comparison with degrees in lab sciences). In short, the excellence of our programs was not something the committee had any basis for evaluating. We are preparing a response -- due very soon -- and would like your help, in part because you are in the position to offer an evaluation.

Clearly, the impressive legacy and ongoing vitality of the Film Studies program at Iowa were ignored in this decision. We are enormously proud of the accomplishments of our graduates, who have been crucial to the development and continued growth of Film Studies as a scholarly discipline in North America and beyond. Our current students promise to continue that legacy into the future. Former Iowa students are among the most productive scholars and influential teachers in the field, and while we do our best to continually inform the administration of this fact, we would now greatly appreciate your helping us to clearly and forcefully articulate the importance of the excellence of our programs to those who will be deciding on the future of our programs.

Please send me a brief testimonial – a few lines would do it – about the importance of the program/s, Iowa’s place as a leader in X (your choice), how study here helped you, etc. While the MFA in Film and Video Production is not currently threatened, the committee did not consider the MFA as connected to Film Studies, although the programs have always benefited enormously from close cooperation and linked interests. Its recommendations suggest in fact that it saw all the programs as separate entities that can be shoved around without affecting the program health of the others. If they do this, I think it will destroy not only Film Studies and Comp Lit but hard Film and Video Production and Translation as well.

I know I’m missing people but want to get this out as soon as possible. Please pass the word to other grads.

Thanks very much!

Corey Creekmur
Director of Film Studies
Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature
The University of Iowa

New Special Issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film & TV Studies

I am very pleased to say that my special issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies has just been published. It explores processes of adaptation in film, television and new media. Hope you enjoy.

Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation
Edited by Iain Robert Smith

Click here to access the full issue


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Part I: Hollywood Cinema and Artistic Imitation

Exploitation as Adaptation
I. Q. Hunter

The Character-Oriented Franchise: Promotion and Exploitation of Pre-Sold Characters in American Film, 1913-1950
Jason Scott

Novelty through Repetition: Exploring the Success of Artistic Imitation in the Contemporary Film Industry, 1983-2007
Stijn Joye


Part II: Found Footage and Remix Culture

A Taxonomy of Digital Video Remixing: Contemporary Found Footage Practice on the Internet
Eli Horwatt

Ethical Possession: Borrowing from the Archives
Emma Cocker

Music Videos and Reused Footage
Sérgio Dias Branco


Part III: Modes of Parody and Pastiche

From Cult to Subculture: Re­imaginings of Cult Films in Alternative Music Video
Brigid Cherry

Queering the Cult of Carrie: Appropriations of a Horror Icon in Charles Lum's Indelible
Darren Elliott

Irony Inc.: Parodic-Doc Horror and The Blair Witch Project
Jordan Lavender-Smith


Part IV: Transnational Screen Culture

A Marxist's Gotta Do What a Marxist's Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier
Austin Fisher

"Tom Cruise? Tarantino? E.T.? ...Indian!": Innovation through Imitation in the Cross-cultural Bollywood Remake
Neelam Sidhar Wright

"La Television des Professeurs?": Charles Dickens, French Public Service Television and Olivier Twist
Pamela Atzori
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Iain