[MGSA-L] CFP: Under Surveillance in the Space Between, 1914-1945

[Roland Moore]

Cross-posted from H-SAE.   
CFP: Under Surveillance in the Space Between, 1914-1945
by Robert HemmingsYour network editor has reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.Type: ConferenceDate: June 2, 2016 to June 4, 2016Location: Quebec, CanadaSubject Fields: Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Film and Film History, Journalism and Media Studies, LiteratureThe 18th annual conference of the Space Between Society focuses on the concept of surveillance—watching, listening, recording—as it relates to literature, art, history, music, theatre, media, and spatial or material culture between 1914 and 1945. From the rise of totalitarianism to the dwindling borders of the British Empire, global citizens were under constant scrutiny as governments, artists, and documentarians developed new ways of listening in. The establishment of intelligence agencies such as the FBI and MI5 just prior to WWI; the standardization of the passport and increased policing of borders; the formation of Mass Observation, with its trained observers who “may be watching you”; the mass production of the 35mm camera and other technologies of information gathering: all reveal a widespread concern with observation. People looked both forward and back, documenting traditions and making plans for the future. This conference asks not only how tropes of surveillance and documentation shaped culture in the years spanning the First and Second World Wars, but also how artists, writers, filmmakers, and activists resisted surveillance, whether by going underground or by watching the watchers. From the nightmare world of Franz Kafka’s The Trial to the panoptic dystopia of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, from the spy film’s impetus to track the “foreigner” to the ever increasing need for documentation, the culture and politics of observation proliferate across this tumultuous period. We welcome proposals that engage with the concept and representation of surveillance in wartime and the interwar period. Potential topics might include:    
   - Spies, espionage, surveillance, detection 
   - Documentary, journalism, (auto)ethnography, Mass Observation 
   - Archives, museums, public records, exhibitions 
   - Blackouts, black markets, budgets, censorship, containment 
   - Treachery, betrayal, blackmail, extortion, collaboration 
   - Double-crossers, femme fatales, leaks, moles, informants 
   - Gossip and eavesdropping 
   - Documentation, identification, passports, citizenship, rights 
   - Borders, colonial policing, social surveillance, racial profiling 
   - Resisting or evading surveillance 
   - Radio broadcasts and transmissions 
   - Radar, photography, film, voyeurism, spectatorship 
   - Architecture, spatial planning, urban design 
   - Genre fiction: spy, crime, detective, thriller 
   - Supervision, education, discipline, unsupervised children 
   - Policing the margins of class, race, gender, sexuality, and religion 
   - Interrogation, confession, witnesses, refugees 
   - Home front regulations, civilian forces, vigilantes, self-policing 
 Contact Info: Please send a 300-word abstract and short biographical statement to ariel.buckley at mcgill.ca by December 1, 2015. Contact Email: ariel.buckley at mcgill.ca URL: http://spacebetweensociety.org/conference/2016-conference/
  
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