I attended a college conference last week. I have the program before me. I’ve been leafing through it, reading the titles of the papers presented and the panel discussions. I’m dyin’ here. To wit: ( These are direct quotes )
Collaboration, Catastrophe and the Creative Process.
Some Pedagogical Implications of the Digital Revolution in Motion Pictures.
“You’re Tellin’ Me You Didn’t See:” The Influence of Hitchcock’s Rear Window on Antionioni’s * Blow Up*.
Story Design in Spatial Hypertext: Winding Dramatic Line Around Narrative Reflection.
Encoded, Embodied and Interactive.
Revelation: An Experiment in Effective Communication.
The Eternal Sound of Blood: Metz and Kracauer on Bowie and Deneuve, or When You are Undead No One Need Hear You Bleed.
Docudrama, Ethics, and Saving Jessica Lynch.
Realism, Genre and Representation in Recent War Films.
The Naked Editor: Teaching Editing Strategies Using “The Naked Chef”.
" Gus Van Sant’s * Elephant* and the Return of Verticality in the Imgae: Why It Matters "
The Indexical Sign in the Digital Age: An Argument Against Realism.
Creating Waking Dreams: An Approach to Intuitive Image Making.
Blonde-Haired Women in the Films of Martin Scorcese.
Squaring the Circle: Integrating Cinema Theory and Filmmaking Practice.
Film and Prose Fiction, From the Inside Out.
Taming Cinema: Teaching to Write the Unspoken.
Not If You Outline: Surmounting Structural Obstacles in Screenwriting.
In Defense of Formula Films: The Evils of Conventional Structure and Why We Love Them.
Toward a Definition of Mormon Cinema: Does Neil LaBute Make Mormon Movies? ( This was moderated by Sharon Swenson of B.Y.U. )
Père Fatale: Neo-Noir Killers
Using Film Festivals to Teach and Present Animated Stories by At-Risk Elementary and High School Students.
The Feminization of the African American Male Athlete in * Boyz 'N the Hood, Cooley High and Cornbread, Earl and Me*.
Crossing the Line: A Practical Approach to Teaching Actors and Directors to Work and Play Together.
Cheers as a Model of Public Communications.
I mean, my gosh. I know it’s publish or perish for tenure-track teachers but can’t SOMEBODY teach these people how to present their programs without sounding like inflated bags of helium ???
What’s your favorite title of the list above? Please note, all caps and lower cases used in quoted titles are accurate to the presentation in the program. It’s a spotty mixture, to be sure. Apparently some folks can dissect Hitchcock but cannot figure out how to use their Caps button…
What’s the seminar or course title that you’ve sat in on that stuck in your head? What’s the fanciest one you’ve ever penned? C’mon, dish!! I always wanted to lead a discussion entitled " Tautology of Humiliation: Why Johnny Loves Pee-Wee’s Playhouse".
My favorite paper ever is one that was done by Federal Emergency Management Agency staff a few years ago entitled something like Human Instability in Open Channel Flow. Basically, the researchers got a bunch of volunteers, attached them all to tethers, stood them in a spillway, and kept releasing more and more water until they started knocking folks over. I can see how this information would be useful, especially to FEMA, and I understand the reasons for the project, but I’ve never been able to get past the mental image of the test subjects.
Dunno…cos I know I won’t be there on Friday anyway – my schedule is I have to more or less show up in time for my presentation, dog-and-pony, and fly out again because oddly enough, I have tickets to go see the subject of my paper
“‘I’ll See You in the Ring:’ Professional Wrestling as an Unlikely Forum for Viewing American Society’s Concern with Issues Such as Masculinity, Ethnicity, Heroism and Villainy.”
My favorite article title ever is from an article about the 1999 film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The ‘[Trans] Textuality’ of Kevin Kline’s Bottom: A Modest Proposal.” The article itself isn’t that great, but the title cracks me up. I mean, it sounds like the sort of thing I would come up with.
A friend of mine wrote one last year called “A Most Ingenious Pair of Dukes: Political and Narrative Symbiosis in More’s History of Richard III.” And another friend did one called “Fear of Flyting” (I don’t know what the subtitle was). And I’m presenting one at MMLA in the fall called “Privy History: Reading the King’s (and Cardinal’s) Two Bodies in Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey and More’s History of Richard III.” Which is, if nothing else, delightfully overinflated…
Naw. I always saw Replicants as the inner demons brought to life. Nice and neat, they have a Termination Date and everything. If you feel sorry for your inner self ( inner serf? ), then you can hardly encourage its demise. OTOH, all things die, hence your Entropy.
