21st SERCIA Conference
University of Artois, Arras, France
3-5 September 2015
Masculine/Feminine:
Gender in English-Language Cinema and Television
The 21st SERCIA conference will be held at the University of Artois, in Arras, France, from September 3 to September 5, 2015. It is organized jointly by the research centers Textes et Cultures at the University of Artois and CORPUS at the University of Picardie Jules Verne.
Masculinity, femininity, and the relations between men and women are central issues in film studies as well as within the film industry. What models and norms of femininity/masculinity do film and television images present? Have these models changed over time? Can they be linked to specific actors and filmmakers? Are films made by women “special”? In her seminal 1975 article, Laura Mulvey added a political dimension to the analysis of gender models and stereotypes by taking into account specific film strategies to highlight the underlying relations of power between men and women. While Mulvey herself wrote “afterthoughts” in order to expand and qualify her concept of “male gaze,” power remains a fundamental issue, whether it be the power of the camera (what difference does the camera make between female/feminine and male/masculine bodies? How can male objectification be analyzed?), or the relations of power between men and women on- and off-screen. Can a commercial enterprise subvert the heteronormative gender order? How do independent productions deal with gender issues? The question of gender, its construction, representation and performance in the world of the moving image, is especially crucial in a context of controversies in France surrounding the so-called “theory of gender” (“la théorie du genre”), thus requiring further analysis.
The 21st SERCIA conference warmly invites film scholars to examine issues of gender through a variery of approaches (film aesthetics, film history, reception studies, sociology, economics, etc.). Comparative studies including at least one English-language film will be considered.
Keynote speakers will be Yvonne Tasker (University of East Anglia) and Jacqueline Nacache (Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot).
List of possible topics
- Masculinity and femininity in film and television productions
The changing models of masculinity and femininity according to historical, national and industrial contexts: what gender norms do silent stars embody? Has Girl Power given real power to women? What are the specificities of British, Australian, South-African masculinities and femininities?
Gender in film genres
Relationships between men and women at home and at work
Star studies
Gender and film technique: are men and women shown onscreen in the same way? (Differences in editing, in the use of close-ups, voice-over, music, special effects…)
- Women and men in the film and television industry
Relationships between filmmakers (male and female) and actors (male and female)
Women directors, producers, scriptwriters and actors in the industry and at the box office
Gender equality in the industry
Analyzing the paratext: gender in film and television marketing, posters, trailers, etc…
- Audiences and academia
Reception studies (how do films address women or men or both? How do audiences receive or “decode” the models put forward?)
Examples of readings against the grain or “queered” reception
Importance of gender in film criticism (Pauline Kael vs. Roger Ebert for example)
Women’s or LGBT film festivals and prizes
Controversies around “feminist” or “anti-feminist” productions (Gone Girl) or the representation of homosexuality (Brokeback Mountain)
Gender research within film and television studies and its evolution
Deadline for proposals: March 16, 2015
Please send abstracts (300 words) in English or in French, along with a short biography, to Julie Assouly (assoulyjulie@hotmail.com), Jean-François Baillon (jfbaillon@sfr.fr) and Marianne Kac-Vergne (mariannekac@yahoo.fr)
Selected Bibliography
Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1995
Bernardi, Daniel (dir.). Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers, and Writers on Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Film, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009
Brown, Jeffrey A. Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture. Jackson : UP of Mississippi, 2011.
Cohan, Steven et Hark, Ina Rae (dirs). Screening the Male, Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, London: Routledge, 1993
De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
---. Technologies of Gender: essays on theory, film, and fiction, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987
Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator.” Screen 23.3-4 (1982): 74-88.
Gledhill, Christine. Nationalising Femininity: culture, sexuality and British cinema in the Second World War, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011
Grant, Barry Keith. Shadows of Doubt: negotiations of masculinity in American genre films, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011
Harper,Sue. Women in British Cinema. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know,London and New York: Continuum, 2000.
hooks, bell. Real to Reel: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. New York and London: Routledge, 2009 [1996].
Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Masculinity in the ReaganEra, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994
Joyrich, Lynne. Re-viewing Reception: television, gender and postmodern culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996
Jullier, Laurent and Leveratto, Jean-Marc. Les Hommes-objets au cinéma, Paris : Armand Colin, 2009
Laing, Heather. The Gendered Score: music in 1940s melodrama and the woman's film, Burlington: Ashgate, 2007
Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Moine, Raphaëlle. Les Femmes d’action au cinéma, Paris : Armand Colin, 2010
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, 16.3, Autumn 1975, 6-18
Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by Duel in the Sun”, in Penley, Constance (ed.),Feminism and Film Theory, New York: Routledge, 1988, 69-79
Nacache, Jacqueline. L’Acteur de cinéma, Paris : Armand Colin, 2005
Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema”, Screen, 24.6, 1983, 2-17
Radner, Hilary, and Stringer, Rebecca. Feminism at the Movies: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema, Routledge, 2011
Rich, B. Ruby, New Queer Cinema: the director's cut, Durham: Duke University Press, 2013
Rowe, Kathleen. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995
Sellier, Geneviève. « L’apport des gender studies aux études filmiques », in Kaenel, André, Lejeune, Catherine et Rossignol, Marie-Jeanne (eds), Cultural Studies, Etudes culturelles, Nancy : Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 2003, 113-130
Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988
Spicer,Andrew. Typical Men. The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema, London et New York, I. B. Tauris, 2003
Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies, Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema, London: Routledge, 1993
Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls, Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, London: Routledge, 1998
Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007
Tasker, Yvonne. Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television since World War II, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011