Welcome to SAAS

Call For Papers for Our Next Conference

"The Image and the Word"

PANEL 22

22) "Woody Allen"
Panel Chair: Eusebio de Lorenzo Gómez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
E-mail: delorenzo@filol.ucm.es

Acclaimed as America's archetypal comedic auteur, Woody Allen has notably contributed to American visual culture for half a century. At the beginning of his career, Allen was classed as a member of the New Hollywood: whereas trauma and violence were explored by Martin Scorsese, F. Ford Coppola, or Michael Cimino, absurdity, ridicule and irony were the preserve of Robert Altman or Woody Allen. The aim of this panel is to explore the cinematic world of Woody Allen and interpret his contribution to modern culture. Admired as a genuinely autonomous creator in Europe but often dismissed in the US as too auteuristic, there's no gainsaying his ability to satirize Hollywood, artists, religion, love, or the urban elite. His oeuvre thus lends itself to being interpreted as a continuing exposé of American collective apprehensions and existential disquiet. Additionally, his narratives commonly exhibit the tension of contraries: rationality vs. irrationality, erotic faith vs. sexual anxiety, the meaning of life vs. experiential absurdity. Because two of Allen's staples are self-reflexivity and the artist's imagination, I would not wish for this panel to ignore the problematized relationship between Woody Allen and his cinematic persona—constructed mostly (though not exclusively) by his own character acting. Such a construction has further been compounded by personal scandals which have overshadowed his work since 1992, and which have been reactivated recently. Although it is certainly not my intention to open up the panel to celebrity gossip, Allen's biographical case is worthy of critical examination insofar as the conflation of the artist's life and his work continues to complicate the critical reception of his films.

Apart from the issues explained in the abstract, potential topics include but need not be confined to:

• Woody Allen: influences and intertextualities (his films and the literary, cinematic, philosophical canons)
• Auteur’s self-fashioning, biography, autobiography
• Cinematic self-reflexivity
• Affects and emotions
• Morality and religion
• Mockery, satire, caricature
• Women characters in Allen films
• Urban landscapes

GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPANTS

Please submit all paper proposals directly to the Panel Chair using this form no later than October 15, 2018.

Panel Chairs will notify applicants of their acceptance/rejection no later than November 15, 2016.

For information on the Conference Venue see the Organizing Committee's website.

SAAS members, ASA members, and other scholars (not necessarily affiliated with any of these associations), are invited to submit proposals to the panel of their choice. Donwload this form, fill it out, and send it via email to the chair of your selected panel.

In order to present a paper, participants who are not SAAS, ASA, APEAA or HELAAS members will be required to pay a one year's membership fee (and enjoy the benefits for the following year) plus the conference fee.

Students have to become SAAS members (if they are not SAAS/ASA/APEEA/HELAAS members already) and pay 50 percent of the registration fee (60€ early bird/75€ late registration) if they wish to present a paper and/or attend the "Félix Martín" Doctoral Seminar.

Deadline: October 15, 2018

Further guideliness for participants can be found here.