History and Historiography of Korean Film
The Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley announces a call for working papers for Korean film workshop, scheduled for July 15 of 2016. It brings attention to the broad topic of history and historiography of Korean film. Over the past two decades, South Korean film has garnered an impressive visibility on the international scene. This workshop examines the changing contour of Korean film history and its relationship with other cultural development and disciplinary engagements. For instance, the recent discovery of colonial-era Korean films has fueled the scholarship on the colonial visual culture, which in turn has reinvigorated the academic interests in Korean film history. On the other hand, the advent of digital media technologies has proliferated various types of visual narratives, spectatorial engagement and reception patterns that changed the way viewers understand film history. How do these disciplinary and technological developments intersect with the critical discourse of Korean film history and national (or transnational) cinema? This workshop is designed to reflect upon the contradictory tendencies and perspectives that these developments have made upon the history of Korean film. It welcomes papers on the issue of Korean film history from all periods, as well as empirical research projects that relate to these questions through case studies.
The issues considered for the workshop include (but are not limited to):
- Location of Korean film history in relation to other disciplines such as history of modern literature, art history, urban studies, cultural studies, sociology, media studies, communication studies, Cold War studies, etc.
- Writings of early film historians, e.g., Yi Youngil, Yun Pongchun and others, and their legacies
- Challenge of revisionist scholarship to national cinema history
- Challenge of trans-regional cultural/film studies to Korean film history
- Film archive, preservation, and digitization of film sources
- Regional film distribution and exhibition practices
- Empirical research on under-examined film events, controversies or developments
- State Censorship, control and regulation as well as artist collaboration
- The Cold War culture and Korean film history
- Pedagogical issues in teaching Korean film history in classroom
- Disappearance or persistence of history in contemporary Korean film
For those who are interested in presenting a paper, submit a 250-word abstract and short CV to Jinsoo An by March 1st, 2016. Papers are requested by June 15 to provide sufficient time for discussants to prepare responses.
The Center for Korean Studies will provide roundtrip economy-class airfare, basic ground transportation, hotel accommodations, and meals during the workshop.