Screen Melodrama: Global Perspectives

Columbia University and New York University Feb 28th March 3rd Thursday, February 28: Columbia, Faculty House Columbia University Seminar Faculty House, Columbia University 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm Round-Table Seminar Topic: World Melodramas: More Magnificent Obsessions Martin Meisel, Columbia University Christine Gledhill, University of Sunderland / New York University Thomas Elsaesser, University of Amsterdam / Columbia University Chair: Gilberto Prez, Sarah Lawrence College Friday, March 1: NYU TSOA Cinema Studies Rm 643 Michelson Theater 8:30 9:00am. Tea/coffee 9:00 am Conference Introductions: Richard Allen (New York University) Jane Gaines (Columbia University) 9:30 am - 11:10 am Women, Industry and Audience Chair: Antonia Lant (NYU) Shelley Stamp (University of California, Santa Cruz) A Womans Picture in a Womans Way to a Womans Taste: Lois Weber and Female Moviegoers in the 1920s Hilary Hallett (Columbia University) Melodrama and the Making of Hollywood 11:10 am -11:30 am. Tea/coffee 11:30 am 12:50 pm Its Always Too Late Chair: Linda Williams (University of California, Berkeley) Jane Gaines (Columbia University) A Melodrama Theory of Feminist Film Historiography Neta Alexander (Columbia University) They Die, Therefore We Are: On Melodrama, Suicide and Happy Endings 1

12:50 pm 2:00pm. Lunch break 2:00 pm - 3:50 pm Apocalyptic Narratives and Historical Trauma Chair: Adam Lowenstein (University of Pittsburgh) Despina Kakoudaki (American University) "Melodrama and Apocalypse: Genre, Politics and the End of the World" Ti-Kai Chang (Columbia University) The Disaster Melodrama in Chinese Cinema: From the 1950s to the Present Rachel Schaff (University of Minnesota) The Holodrama: A Dialectic of Historicized Pathos and Action 3:504:00. Tea /coffee 4:00 pm - 5:20 pm Public Feelings: Melodrama and the State Chair: Arvind Rajagopal (NYU) Brian Larkin (Barnard) The Melodramatic State: Political Aesthetics and State Form Hadi Gharabaghi (NYU) Imperial Logic in Iranian Melodrama: The Case of FilmFarsi 5:20 pm 5:30 pm. Tea/coffee 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm Keynote Address Linda Williams (University of California, Berkeley) Tales of Sound and Fury Signifying Something Introduction: Despina Kakoudaki (American University) Screening Rm 643 Michelson Theater, NYU: 8:30 pm Vctimas del Pecado (Victims of Sin) Emilio Fernndez, Mexico, 1951, 90m, 35mm print Introduction by Richard Pea

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Saturday, March 2: Columbia, Dodge Hall 511 8:30am 9:00 am. Tea/coffee 9:00 am 10:40 am All That Heaven Allows: the Global and the Local Chair: Zhen Zhang (NYU) Ben Singer (University of Madison Wisconsin) "Melodrama, Emotional Universals, and the Question of Cultural Particularity" Carla Marcantonio (George Mason University) "Mapping Melodrama: Atemporality, Affect, and Global Cinema" 10:40 am -11:00 am. Tea/coffee 11:00 am 12:40 pm Intimate Public Spheres Chair: Christine Gledhill (NYU/University of Sunderland) Richard Pea (Columbia University) La Casa and the World: Permutations of the House in Latin American Melodrama Paulina Suarez-Hesketh (NYU) Pedagogy and Play in Victims of Sin Shi-Yan Chao (NYU) "Two Stage Sisters: Comrades, Almost a Love Story" 12:40 pm - 2:00 pm. Lunch break 2:00 pm 4:10 pm Re-visiting the Womens Picture: Gender and Melodrama Chair: Chris Straayer (NYU) Juana Surez (NYU) The Fall of Melodrama: Contemporary Latin American Women Filmmakers and the Reshaping of the Genre

Joe McElhaney (CUNY) "When a Woman Walks: Melodrama, Movement, Cinema" Lisa Bensing (NYU) Matilde Landetas Other Cinema and Representations of the Soldadera in Cinema of the Mexican Revolution 4:10 pm - 4:30 pm. Tea/coffee 4:30 pm 6:10 pm Genealogies of Melodrama Chair: Ben Singer (University of Madison, Wisconsin) Anupama Kapse (CUNY) Origins, Aesthetics, Discourse: Melodrama and Early Indian Cinema. Matthew Buckley (Rutgers University) "Intoxicating Effects: Affective Production in Early British Melodrama" Screening: Columbia, Dodge 511, 8:00 pm Najma (Mehboob Khan, India, 1943, 121m) Introduction by Ira Bhaskar

***************************************** Sunday March 3: NYU TSOA Cinema Studies Rm 643 Michelson Theater 9:00am 9:30 am. Tea/coffee 9:30 am 10:40 am Intertextuality and Iterations Chair: Shelley Stamp (University of California, Santa Cruz) Julia Sirmons (Columbia University) Traviata et nous: Doubling, Repetition and Intermediality in Documentary Melodrama Rochelle Miller (NYU) A Second Chance, or Always Too Late? An Intertextual Reading of Yash Chopras Kaala Patthar

10:40 am -11:00 am. Tea/coffee 11:00 am 12:40 pm The Sacred in Melodrama Chair: Angela Zito (NYU) Ira Bhaskar (Jawaharlal Nehru University) The Traditional Sacred and Bhava: Expressionist Idioms, Stylization and the Orchestration of Affect in Indian Melodrama Richard Allen (NYU) Christs Passion and the Melodramatic Imagination 12:40 pm-2:00 pm. Lunch Break 2:00 pm-3:50 pm Blood and Tears: Body Genres Chair: Jane Gaines (Columbia University) Adam Lowenstein (University of Pittsburgh) The Surrealism of Melodrama: Horror, Ethnography, and The Shout Kartik Nair (NYU) Melodrama by Some Other Means: Genre, Affect, and the Indian Horror Film Christopher Minz (NYU) The Janusian Genre: The Collusion of Melodrama and Horror 3:50 pm 4:00 pm. Tea/coffee 4:00pm-5:00pm Conference Roundtable Chairs: Jane Gaines and Richard Allen