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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 10th-12th July 2024
Pre-conference session – 9th July 2024
Keynote Speaker: to be confirmed
ESPM-Rio
&
Programa de Pós-graduação em Cinema e Audiovisual da Universidade Federal Fluminense (PPGCine-UFF)
20 years of HoMER: What has been done and where is it going?
It has been 20 years since the initial meeting of scholars that would lead to the formation of the international and transdisciplinary History of Moviegoing, Exhibition and Reception (HoMER) research network. During this time, our field has been enriched and expanded by a wide range of developments including the empirical and digital turns in cinema studies, the methodological refinements of the New Cinema History, the centring of audience memories and experiences, the ongoing return to the film itself as an artefact for consideration, and many more besides. Following two decades of exceptionally fruitful activity, we invite colleagues to reflect on the paths our research has taken during this time, the impact of the changing technological, cultural, intellectual and institutional landscapes in which we have operated, the ways in which our work has (or has not) expanded its focus to a more diverse range of territories, cultures and histories, and the horizons of the field yet to be explored.
For this 20th anniversary conference, we welcome proposals for papers or pre-constituted panels focussing on any aspect of the history of moviegoing, exhibition and reception, but in addressing this theme of looking back across recent developments and forwards to future research avenues, we would especially welcome papers that consider the intersections between empirical cinema histories and the following issues:
Transdisciplinarity
Film and cinema history has always been a field of study that has crossed disciplinary boundaries. However, as the field embraced both the empirical focus that informed HoMER’s development and the advent of digital humanities approaches that have shaped a significant portion of our activity since, an ever-broader range of perspectives from beyond the field has recalibrated the ways in which we think about and conceptualise our work. How have these transdisciplinary interventions been understood and deployed, both from a theoretical and a methodological standpoint? Which other disciplines ought we to be looking towards as we continue to seek productive innovations and fresh perspectives?
Consolidation
Over the last two decades, the types of projects undertaken by cinema historians have become increasingly diverse as the focus has taken in, amongst others, the compilation and interoperability of large data sets, comparative work across local, regional, national and international boundaries, the tracing of industrial relationships and their impact on exhibition and distribution practices, the shaping of audience recollections by the complexities and specificities of memory, and the geographical patterns and relationships revealed by GIS spatial analysis and mapping tools. How have these, and the many other, developments in the field informed and interacted with each other? What have been the most influential of developments and where, perhaps, have others not been embraced as fully as they required? What has been achieved in the last 20 years of such innovations and which research practices might need to be further embedded?
Global histories
Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for this anniversary conference is particularly significant given how much HoMER’s geographical coverage has extended since its early focus on Western Europe and North America. The number of colleagues affiliated with HoMER in Latin America has grown significantly in recent years and we are delighted to recognise this by hosting our first conference in the region. At the same time, we recognise that further diversification would be extremely welcome and we would especially encourage proposals from scholars working on regions of the globe that are currently underrepresented in the network, notably Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Future opportunities
While much has been achieved in the last two decades, the pace of change and innovation is only accelerating. While reflecting on all that has been achieved since the initial meeting of what would become the HoMER network, we also look to the years ahead and ask colleagues to consider what appear to be the most tantalising opportunities and avenues for future work. Where are the gaps in the current landscape of cinema history research and how can we start to think about addressing them? What are the methodological and theoretical interventions that will most profoundly shape the field in the years to come? What are the implications of new technologies, such as generative AI, for our work? How can we best engage with new directions in public discourses around heritage, community and the potential social, cultural and economic impacts of our work?
The conference, hosted at Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro, will commence with an optional pre-conference workshop on 9th July 2024. Details of this workshop will be announced in due course. The main conference will be held from 10th-12th July. We are currently exploring the extent of digital hybridity that will be possible, though at the very least we will be able to accommodate remote presentations where necessary.
Please send your proposal through the Abstract Submission Form . 250-word proposals for individual presentations, including the title of the paper and the name, email address and institutional affiliation of the presenter, or 750-word proposals for pre-constituted, including an outline of each paper as well as the title of the panel and the name, email address and institutional affiliation of each presenter.
The deadline for proposals is 14th January 2024. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the conference coordinators: Matthew Jones m.w.jones@exeter.ac.uk
and Talitha Ferraz: talitha.ferraz@gmail. com
Talitha Ferraz, Åsa Jernudd, Matthew Jones and Maria Luna-Rassa
(HoMER network co-ordinators)
Programming Commitee: Åsa Jernudd, Clara Pafort-Overduin, Daniela Treveri Gennari, Hadja Chalupe, James M Burns, Maria Luna Rassa, Matthew Jones, Talitha Ferraz.
Local Organising Committee: Alisson Santana, Andreson de Carvalho, Hadija Chalupe, João Luiz Vieira, Lívia Cabrera, Marcela Soalheiro, Natália Stadler, Pedro Curi, Pedro Butcher, Rafael de Luna, Ryan Brandão, Sabrina Monteiro, Sancler Ebert, Talitha Ferraz.
