MONSTERS, MAD SCIENTISTS, AND MEN FROM OUTER SPACE Area
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
Third-Round Deadline: August 1, 2008
Area: Monsters, Mad Scientists, and Men from Outer Space
What happens when science goes horribly wrong? When nature spins out of control? What do we make of unknown beings that boldly menace the frontiers of civilization, or silently infiltrate them and walk among us?
This area takes an in-depth look at science gone awry in the “B”s the low-budget films of Hollywood’s Golden Age that delivered thrills and adventure to local movie houses and drive-in theaters for more than three decades. Often dismissed as “quickies” made on-the-cheap that drew audiences through sensationalism and exploitation, B-Movies nonetheless were active participants in America’s imaginings of science, technology, nature, and human nature. The “Monsters, Mad Scientists, and Men from Outer Space” Area explores the cultural, social, and political fantasies, fears, and morality tales given shape and form in the classic “B”s and their off-shoots.
Paper topics might include films on invasions, mutations, zombies, the undead, madness, space exploration (“Attack of the Crab Monsters,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”); science-fiction hybrids (“Phantom Empire”); classic “B” or exploitation directors (Sam Newfield, Roger Corman, Don Siegel); along with interrelated historical, theoretical, and socio-cultural concerns.
Please send your 200-word proposal by August 1, 2008 to:
Cynthia Miller, Area Chair
Scholar-in-Residence
Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
EmersonCollege
120 Boylston St.
Boston, MA02116
Email: (email submissions preferred)
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for third-round proposals: August 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 (