CfP – Across Borders: audiences, exhibition and reception

Hybrid conference hosted by the HoMER Network in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome
(https://saras.uniroma1.it/en) and the UK/AHRC funded European Cinema Audiences project (www.europeancinemaaudiences.org).

Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2021
Letters of acceptance/rejection: 20 January 2022

The HoMER Network (https://homernetwork.org) invites submissions for 20-minute papers, as well as designated roundtables, panels, and workshops to be presented at the 2022 conference.

In the last decade, empirical research on cinema audiences has significantly developed methodologies and questions related to film and memory (Treveri Gennari et al 2011, Biltereyst et al 2012, Frankenberg and Lozano, 2014, Kuhn, Biltereyst, Meers 2017, Akbulut 2017). Scholars have successfully combined ethnographic audience study with cultural and cinema history (Arias 2015, Maingard 2017). Analysis of film exhibition and programming practices have also contributed to a better understanding of film culture (Verhoeven 2011, Sedgwick et al 2014, Navitski and Poppe 2017, Whitehead 2018, Whitehead and Moore 2020). Moreover, the persistent default mode of focusing national film cultures in large metropolitan areas has been increasingly challenged by studies of film cultures in rural areas (Meers, Biltereyst and Van de Vijver, 2010, Aveyard, 2011, 2015a, 2015b, Thissen and Zimmermann eds. 2016, Treveri Gennari et al eds. 2018, Çam and Şanlıer Yüksel 2020), along borders (Lozano 2017) and in medium-sized cities (ECA project ongoing, Pafort-Overduin et al 2020). More recently, cross-border studies are appearing, involving both comparative research and entangled history approaches (Biltereyst and Meers 2016, Rosas Mantecón 2017).

The aim of the HoMER conference 2022 is to investigate how audiences, exhibition and reception can be studied as a border-crossing activity. This may include transnational and postcolonial perspectives, more micro-oriented perspectives as well as comparisons on different and sometimes simultaneously existing socio-cultural scales.

• Possible topics and questions to explore might include (but are certainly not limited to):
  – Film cultures among im/migrant, diaspora, minority and marginalised communities,
  researched through aspects related to distribution, exhibition and reception.
  – Memories of cinema-going in communities living close to a border or in a socio-culturally
  divided or multicultural community.  
  – Industry practices (tied to distribution and exhibition) targeting diaspora, minority,
  marginalized, and or cross-cultural audiences. This could relate to marketing, film festivals,
  programming, genre, and stardom.
  – The changing role of gender, however defined, in distribution, exhibition and reception.
  – The changing role of age in distribution, exhibition and reception.
  – Theoretical and methodological issues related to transnational and comparative research in
  cinema history.

Abstract Submission Form
Abstracts of 250 to 300 words, plus 3 or 4 bibliographic entries, and a 50-word academic biography
can be submitted via the HoMER 2022 Abstract Submission Form, which can be found here: form

To submit a suggestion for a pre-constituted panel or workshop, please include all the information for the panel or the workshop in one form, which can be found here: form

For queries regarding submission, please contact conference co-ordinators, Åsa Jernudd (asa.jernudd@oru.se) and Maria Luna Rassa (mlunar@tecnocampus.cat). For any specific query about ECA, please contact Daniela Treveri Gennari (dtreveri-gennari@brookes.ac.uk).

Programming Committee
Valerio Coladonato
Pierluigi Ercole
Talitha Ferraz
Damiano Garofalo
Åsa Jernudd
Maria Luna Rassa
Dalila Missero
Clara Pafort Overduin
Kata Szita
Daniela Treveri Gennari
Romana Ando