Performing Bodies: Gesture, Affect, and Embodiment on Screen

Since the beginnings of cinema, the human body has been a privileged object of attention and desire, eliciting the fascinated regard of motion picture cameras and spectators.  And yet, despite the central place of the body in film, cinema and media studies has often found it difficult to address the question of performance – that is, to ask “What do bodies do on screen?”

The 11th Annual CMS Graduate Student Conference aims to explore this question by situating screen performance in an expanded field of bodily practices and critical discourses, drawing on film history alongside fields like theater, dance, performance art, and new media.  Attending to bodies as social objects as well as aesthetic material, the conference seeks to initiate conversations on the diversity of ways in which performing bodies present themselves, carry meaning, and move us.  Friday’s keynote address will be given by Professor Elena Gorfinkel (UW-Milwaukee), and the conference will continue on Saturday with papers presented by graduate students from around the country and beyond, concluding with a round table discussion between Gorfinkel and University of Chicago professors Lauren Berlant and Yuri Tsivian.

Complete conference details available here. The conference is organized by Matt Hubbell (Ph.D. student, CMS), Noa Merkin (Ph.D. student, CMS), and Nicole Erin Morse (Ph.D. student, CMS), and is co-sponsored by the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Council on Advanced Studies, and the Humanities Division Graduate Student Council.