THE ATOMIC AGE Area
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
Second-Round Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: The Atomic Age
After the creation of the atom bomb and its use against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, nuclear arms, energy, and science were the subject of countless films across a wide range of genres, from Godzilla and Dr. Strangelove to The China Syndrome, The Day After and 24. How did the movies respond to the atomic age? How did they represent nuclear science and scientists? Did Atomic Age films exaggerate or dismiss the dangers of nuclear weapons and energy? How did social or political events concerning atomic energy make their way into film? And, in turn, how did such films affect national policy or civic character? These are just a few questions to be addressed in this area, which investigates the impact of the nuclear age (1945 to the present) on society as portrayed through film and television. Presentations can, for example, feature analyses of individual films and/or TV programs from historical perspectives, surveys of documents related to the production of films, or investigations of nuclear history and culture as explored through film.
Genres could include films attempting to define atomic history, Hollywood blockbusters, TV programs or mini-series, science-fiction, propaganda, instructional films, documentaries, docudramas, newsreels and broadcast media, war films, westerns, national cinemas, music videos, avant-garde films, actualities, and direct cinema.
Paper topics might include atomic war, national security and secrecy, atomic espionage, ethics and morals, reel representations of atomic science and scientists, peaceful applications of nuclear power, atomic fantasies, nuclear dystopia, atomic themes in westerns, civil defense, myths, nuclear terrorism, government and institutions, the anti-nuclear movement, nuclear accidents and near-disasters, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in memory and post-memory, health, safety, environment, gender, ethnicity, race, class, etc.
Please send your 200-word proposal by May 1, 2008 to:
Christoph Laucht, Chair of the Atomic Age Area
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
University of Liverpool
Chatham Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZR
United Kingdom
Phone: ++44(0)151-794-2404
Email:
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: May 1, 2008.
This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film and History. Speakers will include founder John O’Connor and editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website (