Mountains & Cinema
International Conference | October 14 to 17, 2021
Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck
© Richard T. Walker, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
Cinema and mountains afford us with new vistas and visions and offer deep insights into the mobility of the gaze. This conference examines the many connections between mountains and cinema as well as the different ways in which they mediate each other. Mountain cinema enacts global and local visions of the world and is a site of transnational and transcultural negotiations. Although historical studies of mountain film frequently focus on national aspects or approach mountains as cultural and national borders, mountain films have always been deeply invested in globalized panoramic views and charged with ideologies of empire, economy, geopolitics, and gender. By its virtue of rendering the world dynamic and open, cinema shows us the changing social, cultural, and material figurations of mountains. Mediating between human and geological time, cinema reveals the fluidity of mountains and allows us to register changes beyond the human scalar. Mountains afford transnational perspectives and deep insights into conceptions of cinema. Their persistence turns mountain cinema into a stage where the historical interconnectivity of geopolitical, cultural, social, and ecological agencies can be studied in particularly productive ways.
Participation is free of charge.
Keynote and Plenary Speakers
Jennifer Fay (Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and English, Vanderbilt University, USA)
Tom Gunning (Professor Emeritus of Cinema and Media Studies and Art History, University of Chicago, USA)
Alexa Weik von Mossner (Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
Registration
Please register via the following link if you are interested in joining the conversation online:
https://webapp.uibk.ac.at/mountaincinema/
Organization
The conference is organized by the research group “Delocating Mountains” (represented by Christian Quendler and Eva-Maria Müller), Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck.
Conference Advisory Committee and Support
Belgüzar Çetin, Cornelia Klecker, Benita Lehmann, Sascha Pöhlmann, Benjamin Robbins, Sabine Sanoll, Maximilian Schweigl, Sandra Tausel, Johannes Vith, and Hilde Wolfmeyer.
Contact
Research Project – “Delocating Mountains”
Department of American Studies
University of Innsbruck
homepage: https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/mountainfilmstudies/
e-mail: eva-maria.mueller@uibk.ac.at and christian.quendler@uibk.ac.at
This conference is supported by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, the U.S. Embassy Vienna, the FWF, the Land Tirol, the Land Vorarlberg, and the University of Innsbruck's Faculty of Language, Literature and Culture, International Relations Office, Office of the Vice Rector for Research, Research Area Cultural Encounters - Cultural Conflicts, and Center for Inter-American Studies (ZIAS).
