Final Conference Childhood and Nation in World Cinema
13 - 19 April 2016
Kisses, Lance Daly (2008) Image Courtesy of Fastnet Films
Royal Holloway, University of London
The final conference of the Leverhulme Trust funded international research project Childhood and Nation in World Cinema: Borders and Encounters Since 1980 next week, 18 and 19 April 2016.
Brining together scholars from around the world to explore how childhood and nation is depicted on screen, the conference aims to take forward children’s perceptions of, and involvement in, screen representation. At the same time, this project acknowledges the importance of the child in figuring ideas of nationhood in adult cultural and social consciousness, as it is explored through film.
Building on the work of the project, and previous events at the University of New South Wales (Australia) Ningbo Institute of Technology at Zhejiang University (China) and the University of Cambridge, the conference includes keynote speakers Professor Daniela Berghahn from Royal Holloway’s Department of Media Arts and Professors Karen Lury and David Martin-Jones from the University of Glasgow.
Visit the Childhood and Nation in World Cinema website for the full schedule, profiles of speakers and abstracts.
A highlight of the event will be a dialogue between Dr Catherine Grant from the University of Sussex and Professor Annette Kuhn, formerly of Queen Mary, University of London, following a screening of Grant’s video-essay in homage to Kuhn’s scholarly work on film. In recognition of the venue, the conference will conclude with a talk on Child-centred painting by Harriet O’Neill, the curator of Royal Holloway’s Picture Gallery, followed by a dinner in the Picture Gallery itself.
Dr Sarah Wright from Royal Holloway’s School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, who is Principal Investigator of the Childhood & Nation in World Cinema project and organiser of the conference, commented:
““I am delighted to be able to bring together so many international experts to Royal Holloway to explore childhood and nation on film. Given the contemporary circulation of images of the child in connection with immigration, memory and national and international politics, this conference promises to be timely as well as field-defining.”