ReFocus: the Films of Ken Russell – Symposium / Book Launch (Kingston University Town House, July 6th 2023)

Refocus: The Films of Ken Russell (Edinburgh University Press)

Book Launch / Symposium (Call for Papers)

July 6^th  2023, Kingston University Town House

The past few years have a seen a renaissance of critical interest in the work of British film and television director Ken Russell. Beside a major conference held at Kingston University in 2017 about Russell, there have been several PhD studies and numerous publications dealing with aspects of his film and television work.

To commemorate the publication of The Films of Ken Russell as part of Edinburgh University Press’s ReFocus: International Director’s Series earlier this year, Kingston University will be hosting its second event about Ken Russell on 6^th July 2023: a one-day symposium about Russell’s work and his collaborative relationships. The symposium will culminate in the evening with the book launch for ReFocus: The Films of Ken Russell.  

ReFocus: The Films of Ken Russell considered both Ken Russell’s legacy and emphasised his collaborative practices and relationships. Therefore, we are inviting papers which deal with all aspects of Russell’s work, and especially his working relationships

We are especially inviting papers which deal Russell’s collaborations with the actor Murray Melvin – who passed away on 14^th April 2023. Melvin emerged out of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, finding fame as the role Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, and was a stalwart of Russell’s informal repertory company between The Diary of a Nobody in 1964 and Prisoner of Honor in 1991.  In later years, Melvin advocated for the legacies of both Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop, and Ken Russell.  He was a major part of the Ken Russell conference held at Kingston University in 2017 and this event aims to bring the importance of his work with Russell into focus.

We are inviting abstracts which deal with but are not limited to the following:

• Russell’s collaborative relationships
• Russel’s contemporary legacy in film and television
• Russell’s work at the BBC and relationship with Huw Wheldon
• Russell’s later work at ITV and relationship with Melvyn Bragg
• Russell’s composer and artist biopics
• Russell’s and his actors
• Russell and the critics
• Russell’s work in the US during the 1980s
• Russell’s Amateur filmmaking and ‘Garagiste’ films
• Set design, space and architecture in Russell’s work
• The Devils at 52
• Russell’s unmade films
• Russell as a cult film director
• Russell in the archive

Please return Abstracts to me before the end of May at m.melia@kingston.ac.uk.

The E.T Book – New Perspectives on the Classic 1980s Blockbuster (Call for Papers)

The ET Book: New Perspectives on The Classic 1980s Blockbuster

Editor: Dr Matthew Melia (Kingston University)

Publisher: Bloomsbury

 Released in 1982 and  grossing over $792 million,  E.T. The Extra Terrestrial  stands as Spielberg’s second highest grossing film after Jurassic Park (1993). The film, which deals with the friendship between  two young boys – one a lost alien, accidentally left behind on Earth and the other a human child  named Eliot,  went  on to become a cultural milestone  and opened  the way for a wide range of child friendly science fiction films (or films that were at least marketed as such) throughout the 1980s (e.g. Gremlins [1986],  The Goonies [1985], Ghostbusters [1984]) to the present where its influence may be felt in the hugely popular Netflix drama Stranger Things (amongst other things)

In a recent interview Spielberg stated that he considers E.T  to be his most “perfect” film.  So what is it about the film that has come to embody Spielberg’s work as a director? Is it the universality of its appeal? Its themes of childhood and family? Is it in the way that the film balances an outwardly sentimental exterior with a much darker interior – engaging themes of the breakdown of the American family, divorce, loss, abandonment, imperilled children and Reaganite cold war paranoia?  This book,  the first edited collection of critical scholarship dedicated to the film, follows in the wake of its Bloomsbury predecessors, The Jaws Book (2020) and The Jurassic Park Book (forthcoming 2023) and  invites  fresh and contemporary scholarship around Spielberg’s film in the wake of its 40^th anniversary in 2022.  You are invited to submit chapter proposals dealing with all aspects of E.T’s  production, development and reception history; its cultural and cinematic legacy; its  influence and influences;  historical and cultural contexts and fandom and fan engagement. Furthermore the book not only invites chapters on E.T but also aims to critically and comparatively consider the presence of  extra terrestrials elsewhere across Spielberg’s filmography (either as director or producer) – not least in his 1977 science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Subjects considered for proposal will include (but not be limited to)

• E.Ts production and release history
• Merchandising and promotion
• E.T  and its place  in Spielberg’s filmography
• Cultural and cinematic legacy of E.T.
• Critical responses and audience reception
• Novelisations
• Michael Jackson and E.T – The soundtrack album
• Music and E.T – John William’s Score
• E.T. Reagan and the Cold War
• E.T  and politics
• E.T.  suburbia and the American landscape
• Family, Divorce and Childhood
• Youth and Adolescence
• E.T. and the Gothic
• Is E.T. a children’s film?
• Science fiction and horror in E.T
• The influence of E.T on Spielberg’s other Aliens
• Science and Scientists in E.T
• Home and the domestic space in E.T.
• Unmade E.T: early incarnations and abandoned sequels
• Story development: Melissa Mathison and the script.
• E.T and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• Lostness,  alienation and friendship
• ‘E.T Phone Home’ – communication and language in E.T
• E.T  and animatronics
• E.T  and A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001)– critical overlaps
• E.T and space (terrestrial and outer)
• Environmental issues in E.T
• E.T, nostalgia and fandom
• E.T and Alien conspiracy theories.
• E.T.-sploitation movies

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to m.melia@kingston.ac.uk by September 1^st 2023.