<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> </div><div>Apologies for Cross-posting:<br><br>*Global Mythology and World Cinema*<br><br>A proposed edited collection by Mikel J. Koven (University of Worcester)<br><br><a href="mailto:m.koven@worc.ac.uk">m.koven@worc.ac.uk</a><br><br><br><br>*Global Mythology and World Cinema* will be a collection of essays which<br>discuss how a variety of world cinemas use their own indigenous cultural<br>mythologies. The *function* of these myths and their filmic counterparts<br>will vary from culture-to-culture and from film-to-film. The collection will<br>argue against the extant paradigm of “mythic cinema”, wherein the term<br>“myth,” co-opted by Jungians and Campbellians, refers to any vague perceived<br>universal archetype. This collection will be about cultural specificity,<br>not universal generalizations, regarding the sacred and how that sacred is<br>manifested in world cinema.<br><br><br><br>In terms of a definition of “myth”, *Global Mythology and World<br>Cinema*begins with William Bascom’s 1965 definition (in “The Forms of<br>Folklore:<br>Prose Narratives” in *Journal of American Folklore* 78: 3-20) and builds<br>from there. Bascom defined myths as “prose narratives which, in the society<br>in which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what<br>happened in the remote past”. Bascom continues,<br><br> They are accepted on faith; they are taught to be believed; and they can be<br>cited as authority in answer to ignorance, doubt, or disbelief. Myths are<br>the embodiment of dogma; they are usually sacred; and they are often<br>associated with theology and ritual. Their main characters are not usually<br>human beings, but they often have human attributes; they are animals,<br>deities, or culture heroes, whose actions are set in an earlier world, when<br>the earth was different from what it is today, or in another world such as<br>the sky or underworld. (4)<br><br>While *Global Mythology and World Cinema* will not be limited to Bascom’s<br>definition, we use it here to make that distinction between the current<br>project and how other scholars have used the word “myth”, often in the same<br>generalized and universalized way that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell have.<br>This current project seeks to rescue the genre from its use to refer to<br>(imagined) archetypes, and welcomes opportunities to bridge the<br>anthropological and folkloric definitions with more cultural studies<br>approaches (i.e. Levi-Strauss and Barthes).<br><br><br><br>We seek in-depth papers (approximately between 8000-10, 000 words) exploring<br>the indigenous mythic visions from the following cultural groups’ cinemas:<br><br>· Japanese cinema<br><br>· Chinese cinema<br><br>· Korean cinema<br><br>· Polynesian and South East Asian cinemas<br><br>· Oceanic cinemas (i.e. Maori and Australian Aborigine)<br><br>· Indian cinemas<br><br>· African cinemas (from many regions and groups)<br><br>· Middle-Eastern and Arab cinemas<br><br>· and the cinemas and mythologies of Native Ameicans<br><br>Other topics may also be suggested; the above list is intended as<br>illustrative, not definitive.<br><br><br><br>While an academic publisher has been approached, and interest in the<br>collection has been expressed, we are not yet at the stage to request<br>abstracts: We are currently looking for statements of “interest”.<br><br><br><br>If you have an idea which you would like to be considered for inclusion in<br>this book, please email Mikel J. Koven (m.koven@worc.ac.uk) with a brief<br>(informal) description of what you would like to write on by 31 October<br>2010. The deadline for formal abstracts (200-words) will be a few months<br>later, and final papers would not need to be submitted until January 2012.<br><br>-- <br>Mikel J. Koven<br>Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?<br>- Juvenal (Satires VI)<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>