The Firminists at Slash 3

The Firminists will be represented at Slash 3: The Final Cut, a Study Day on Slash fanfiction at De Montfort University, Leicester on 28 February 2008. I.Q. Hunter, who is also convening the Study Day, will give a paper called ‘Through a slash optic – or what my epic three-part journey through slash taught me about fandom, pornography and my own dumb ignorance’.

The abstract reads: 'The Firminists are a small group of literary agitators who promote experimental writing on film with the aim of inspiring a new poetics of cinema. In this brief autobiographical paper, one of the Firminists explores how slash praxis might inform erotic psychogeography. The paper includes unnecessarily provoking references to Philip Larkin’s Trouble at Willow Gables and the new St Trinians film.'


SLASH 3: THE FINAL CUT
THE 3rd AND LAST DMU FANFICTION STUDY DAY

Monday 25 February 2008
10.00 am – 6.00 pm

Clephan Building,
Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University,
Leicester, UK

Plenary speakers: Sheenagh Pugh, Robin Anne Reid,
Mafalda Stasi, E.L. Dollard, and I.Q. Hunter

With Slash 3, De Montfort University once again offers a slash-friendly forum for discussion of the most exciting developments in fanfic. The main focus of papers will be on slash fiction, a category of fan stories, almost exclusively by women, mostly about homoerotic affairs between male characters in popular films and TV series. All readers, writers and academic researchers of fan fiction, as well as interested members of the public, are welcome to participate.

Please contact Ian Hunter at iqhunter@dmu.ac.uk to reserve a place. An attendance fee of £20 / £12 concessions, including lunch and coffees, will be payable on the day.

Call for papers: The Wild Eye

The Wild Eye: Experimental Film Studies

In order to break what Robert B. Ray defines as the ‘path dependency’ of contemporary film studies, radically new or reinvented forms of writing are urgently required. In the words of Bela Balazs ‘it will be an inspiring theory that will fire the imagination of future seekers for new worlds and creators of new arts’.

Proposals are thus invited for a new edited collection and a one-day symposium intended to promote experimental approaches to the analysis of film. Contributions are particularly welcome from individuals or groups outside of academia. The collection will be unapologetically fragmentary.

Aiming to offer a modern poetics of cinema, the collection seeks to embrace the widest possible range of unconventional techniques. Contributors are therefore invited to cast off the straight-jacket of contemporary film writing by drawing on such investigatory approaches as:

·Psychogeography

·Surrealist techniques (e.g. irrational enlargements)

·‘Cinematic’ writing

·Autobiography

·Creative non-fiction

·‘Occult’ applications

·Fan writing

Send 250 word proposals for texts of between 1000 – 10,000 words to: firminists@yahoo.co.uk

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 29 February 2008