The sixth conference on “Women and the Silent Screen” was hosted in Bologna from June 24 to June 26 2010. Paper abstracts are available from the conference’s main website
The conference has been held previously in:
2008 | Stockholm
2006 | Guadalajara
2004 | Montreal
2001 | Santa Cruz
1999 | Utrecht
Bologna 2010 Program
Thursday, June 24
8:45 am / Conference Registration and Check-in
9:15 am / Welcome Addresses
9:45 am / Plenary Session: Keynote Address
Christine Gledhill (University of Sunderland)
Reframing Women in British Cinema Culture of the 1910s and 1920s: Some Problems and Issues
10:45 am / Coffee Break
11:15 am – 1:15 pm / Panels 1A, 1B, 1C
Panel 1A / The Sound of the Silents 1 / Moderator: Amy Sargeant (University of Warwick)
Jane M. Gaines (Columbia University)
Wordlessness
Tami Michelle Williams (University of Wisconsin)
Eurhythmy or the Sound of an Arabesque? The Musicality of Gesture and Bodily Expression in Germaine Dulac’s Early Silent Films
Kim Tomadjoglou (Library of Congress)
Music and Images in the Cinema of Elvira Notari
Lauri Piispa (Turun Yliopisto)
Screen Actresses and the Stanislavsky System of Acting in Russian Cinema of the 1910s
Panel 1B / Problems in Historiography / Moderator: Virginia Wexman (University of Illinois)
David Mayer (University of Manchester)
Griffith’s Female Underlings or Independent Achievers?
Philippe Gauthier, André Gaudreault (Université de Montreal)
Alice Guy and the Transition from Kine-Attractography to Institutional Cinema: The Example of The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ
Susan Potter (University of Auckland)
The History that Will Be: Lesbian Cinematic Representation Before Cinema
Margaret Hennefeld (Brown University)
Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light and the Politics of Hyper-Visibility
Mark Lynn Anderson (University of Pittsburgh)
Her Reputation Precedes Her, or The Impossible Films of Vera, Countess of Cathcart
Panel 1C / Case Studies in Gender Film Criticism / Moderator: Victoria Duckett (University of Melbourne)
Meryl Shriver-Rice (University of Miami)
Silent Leading Women: Female Agency and the Construction of Masculinity in Lois Weber’s The Blot
Veronica Pravadelli (Università Roma Tre)
Lois Weber’s Uneasy Progressive Politics: The Articulation of Class and Gender in Where Are My Children?
Laura Evelyn Horak (University of California, Berkeley)
“A Most Charming Boy”: The Appeal of the Female Boy in US Silent Film
Johanna Schmertz (University of Houston-Downtown)
“Who Dressed A.B. Like a Girl?” Leatrice Joy’s Performances of Gender in The Clinging Vine (1926)
1:15 pm / Lunch
2:45 – 4:20 pm / Panels 2A, 2B, 2C
Panel 2A / Movie Fan Scrapbooks: New Resources for Writing Women’s Cinema History / Moderator: Mark Garrett Cooper (University of South Carolina)
Richard Abel (University of Michigan)
Edna Vercoe’s Scrapbook “Romance with the Movies” (1914-1915)
Maj Eimers (Universiteit Utrecht)
Who Is This Fan?: Fandom and Fan Identity as Seen through the Works of a Lil Dagover and Henny Porten Fan
Leslie DeBauche (University of Wisconsin)
Movies in the Lives of American Girls: Interrogating the Evidence Found in High School Memory Books
Jennifer Horne (Catholic University of America)
Scrapbook as Public Sphere: The Women’s Club Year in Review
Panel 2B / Screenwriters / Moderator: Giuliana Muscio (Università di Padova)
Maria Fosheim Lund, Livia Bloom, Daniela Bajar (Columbia University)
Behind the Typewriter: The Role of Women in the Development of the Screenwriting Profession
Claus Tieber (University of Salzburg)
Mary Pickford as Written by Frances Marion
Chiara Tognolotti (Università di Firenze)
Marie Epstein as a Scenarist: A Case Study
Micaela Veronesi (Associazione Italiana per le Ricerche di Storia del Cinema)
Woman, Wife, Screenwriter: Renée de Liot and the Screenplay in the Silent Era
Panel 2C / Stardom and Masochism / Moderator: Veronica Pravadelli (Università Roma Tre)
Robert L. Singer (CUNY Graduate Center)
“From Boudoir to Street”: Naturalism and the Suffering Female in International Silent Cinema
Kerry L. McElroy (Concordia University)
Starlets to Secretaries: the Suicide Gesture in the Silent Era
Valeria Festinese (Università Roma Tre)
Masochism in/and Italian Diva Films
Elena Ezechielli (Università di Bologna)
Sickness Becomes a Woman: Divas and Love-sick
4:20 pm / Coffee Break
4:45 – 6:30 pm / Panels 3A, 3B, 3C
Panel 3A / Women of Chinese Cinema / Moderator: Richard Abel (University of Michigan)
Menghsin C. Horng (University of California, Berkeley)
Voiceless Smiles and the Limits of Gesture in Shanghai Silent Film
Cristina Colet (Università di Torino)
Ruan Lingyu: Star of Chinese Cinema
Funing Tang (University of Miami)
Ambivalence of the Camera: The Representation of the Female Body and Identity in Chinese Silent Cinema of the 1930s
Xiqing Qin (Chinese National Academy of Arts)
Pearl White and the New Female Image in Chinese Silent Cinema
Panel 3B / The Sound of the Silents 2 / Moderator: Jennifer Horne (Catholic University of America)
Elena Mosconi (Università Cattolica di Milano)
Feminine Stars and the Cultural Heritage of Opera in Early Italian Cinema
Victoria Duckett (University of Melbourne)
The Italian Tradition of bel canto in Early International Cinema
Jennifer Fleeger (Catholic University of America)
Metropolitan Women: Geraldine Farrar and Marion Talley Silence Opera on Screen
Amy Lawrence (Dartmouth College)
Bruised and Confused: Helen Morgan on Stage on Screen
Panel 3C / Not Just Divas 1 / Moderator: David Mayer (University of Manchester)
Elena Dagrada (Università di Milano)
Eleonora Duse, Grazia Deledda and the Others: A Women Contribution in the Country of Melodrama
María A. Camí-Vela (University of North Carolina)
Women, Bullfighters and Identity in Spanish Silent Cinema: Musidora (1889-1957)
Hugh Munro Neely (Mary Pickford Institute for Film Education)
A Studio of Her Own: Women Producers at First National, 1918-1928
Dolores McElroy (Columbia University)
Nazimova’s Salomé: Silent Monument
7:00 – 8:45 pm / Dinner
9:00 pm / Cinema Lumière, Via Azzo Gardino 65/b
Screening Program
Friday, June 25
9:15 am – 10:30 am / Panels 4A, 4B, 4C
Panel 4A / New Women and the Modern / Moderator: Rosanna Maule (Concordia University)
Jan Olsson (Stockholms Universitet)
The Reinvention of the Cosmopolitan Heroine: Dimitri Buchowetski’s Contribution to Swedish Silent Cinema
Patrick Keating (Trinity University)
Lighting Garbo: Modern Photography and the New Woman
Jaakko Seppälä (Helsingin Yliopisto)
Distant Dreams: Flapper movies and Finnish Film Culture
Panel 4B / Filming the Ethnic Difference / Moderator: Emma Sandon (Birkbeck University)
Isabel Arredondo (SUNY Plattsburgh)
The Commercial Value of Indo and Afro-Colombian Bodies: Romelli’s Gold Platinum (1937)
Nina Cartier (Northwestern University)
Somethin’ Just Ain’t Right: Quareness as a Paradigm for Probing Narration in Early Black Cinema
Katherine Groo (University of Aberdeen)
Native and Narration: Josephine Baker and the Cinema of Métissage
Panel 4C / Stardom and Fashion / Moderator: Ester de Miro (Università di Genova)
Mila Ganeva (Miami University, Ohio)
The German Diva Brigitte Helm as a Fashion Icon of the 1920s Stardom
Mary Desjardins (Dartmouth College)
Fading Stars and the Ruined Commodity Form: Star Discourses of Loss in Fan Magazines, 1914-1929
Anke Brouwers (Universiteit Antwerpen)
If It Works For Mary…: Advice from America’s Sweetheart
10:30 am / Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:45 am / Plenary Session
Astrid Söderbergh Widding and Sofia Bull (Stockholms Universitet)
Presenting Not So Silent: Women in Cinema Before Sound, Proceedings of the 2008 WSS Conference
Mariann Lewinsky (Cineteca di Bologna) and Bryony Dixon (National Film Archive), Elif Rongen (Eye-Nederlands Filmmuseum)
Presenting Forze irresistibili, a DVD on early comic actresses and suffragettes
11:45 am / Panels 5A, 5B, 5C
Panel 5A / Professions 1 / Moderator: Astrid Söderbergh Widding (Stockholms Universitet)
Sofia Bull (Stockholms Universitet)
“She Has a Sense of Humour”: Alva Lundin’s Erotikon Art-Titles
Tom Paulus, Vito Adriaensens (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Little Girls in Empire Dresses: The Influence from Women Children’s Book Illustrators on Early Art Titles
Federico Pierotti (Università di Firenze)
Colouring the Figures. A First Survey on the Relations Between Working Women and Hand Colouring in Italy
Panel 5B / Acting as Creation / Moderator: Mariann Lewinsky (Cineteca di Bologna)
Sawako Ogawa (Waseda University)
More Woman than a Woman: Oyama’s Femininity and Actress’s Modernization in 1910s Japanese Film
Nancy Irela Nuñez (Cineteca Nazionale)
Sources and Creation in Francesca Bertini’s Acting Style
Stella Dagna (Università di Pisa)
Homage to the Female Creator: Maria Gasparini and La Ribalta
Panel 5C / Not Just Divas 2 / Moderator: Tricia Welsch (Bowdoin College)
Michele Leigh Torre (Southern Illinois University)
Alexander Khanzhonkov and His Queens of the Screen
Ana Maria Pessoa dos Santos (Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa)
Carmen Santos and the Starlight
Emiliana Losma (Centro Studi e Documentazione Pensiero Femminile)
Rediscovering Bianca Virginia Camagni
1:00 pm / Lunch
2:45 pm / Panels 6A, 6B, 6C
Panel 6A / Creating and Critiquing Hollywood’s New Women / Moderator: Jennifer Bean (University of Washington)
Hilary Anne Hallett (Columbia University)
Re-reading Hollywood’s First Sexual Scandal: Virginia Rappe, New Western Women, and the Bohemian Movie Colony
Shelley Stamp (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Exit Flapper, or Lois Weber’s Critique of Jazz Age Hollywood
Anne Morey (Texas A&M University)
School of Scandal: Alice Duer Miller, Scandal, and the New Woman
Vicki Callahan (University of Wisconsin)
“Not Even a Word of Farewell – Only a Smile”: Melancholic Endings and Wistful Musings on the Demise of Mabel Normand and the New Woman
Panel 6B / Studies in National Cinemas /Moderator: Giacomo Manzoli (Università di Bologna)
Begoña Soto Vázquez (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos)
How to Research the Exception. The Power of the Unknown, Women and Spanish Silent Cinema
Donna R. Casella (Minnesota State University)
Women and Nationalism in Indigenous Irish Filmmaking of the Silent Period
Ouissal Mejri (Università di Bologna)
Women in Egyptian Silent Cinema: The 1920′s Pioneers
Sheila Schvarzman (Universidade Anhembi Morumbi)
Moviegoing in São Paulo in the 1920s
Panel 6C / Analyzing and Theorizing Films / Moderator: Elena Dagrada (Università di Milano)
Astrid Söderbergh Widding (Stockholms Universitet)
Looking at Herself: Cinema as a Dream Screen – Le Mystère des Roches de Kador
Althea Wasow (University of California, Berkeley)
Freud, Marx, and Fräulein Else: The Psyche, the Social, and the Problem of Unrepresentability
April Miller (University of Northern Colorado)
Our Delinquent Daughters: Reforming Adolescence in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl and G. W. Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl
4:20 pm / Coffee Break
4:45 – 6:30 pm / Panels 7A, 7B, 7C
Panel 7A Asta Nielsen / Moderator: Karola Gramann (Kinothek Asta Nielsen)
Martin Loiperdinger (Universität Trier)
The Emergence of the Star System in Germany, 1911: Asta Nielsen, Monopolfilm, Audience Attraction, and Investment
Jennifer M. Bean (University of Washington)
“Drawn Across the Sea”: Asta Nielsen in America, 1912-1914
Annette Förster (Utrecht Universiteit)
Asta Nielsen’s (Re-)turn to the Stage in the 1920′s: A Paradox or a Consistent Choice?
Panel 7B / Excentric Bodies / Moderator: Christine Gledhill
Amy Sargeant (University of Warwick)
However Odd: Elsa Lanchester
Laraine Porter (British Silent Film Festival)
A Lass and A Lack: Women and Comedy in British Silent Cinema
Kristen Anderson Wagner (University of Southern California)
Silent Comediennes and “The Tragedy of Being Funny”
Marzia Ruta (Università di Bologna)
Lea Giunchi: The Story of a Lost Comical Body
Panel 7C / Professions 2 / Moderator: Drake Stutesman (New York The Women’s Film Preservation Fund)
Viktoria Paranyuk (Columbia University)
Riding Horses and Writing Scripts: Josephine Rector at Essanay
Bethany Czerny (Columbia University)
Fade In: Rediscovering Katharine Hilliker Through Choices in Historical and Digital Research New Resources
Kerrie Welsh (Tisch School of the Arts)
Living Out Loud: From Silent Cinema to Baltimore Punk Rock, An Oral History of Alice Stringer (1912-1999)
7:00 – 8:45 pm / Dinner
9:00 pm / Cinema Lumière, Via Azzo Gardino 65/b
Screening Program
Saturday, June 26
9:15 – 11:15 am / Panels 8A, 8B, 8C
Panel 8A / Cinephilia / Moderator: Shelley Stamp (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Rosanna Maule (Concordia University)
Women’s Cinephilia and the Reframing of Female Subjectivity in Film
Ansje van Beusekom (Universiteit Utrecht)
A Female Touch or a Role Model? Dutch Film Critic Elisabeth de Roos and the International Film Avant-garde
Nathalie Morris (British Film Institute)
“Opportunities for Women”: British Film Publicists
Clare Watson (University of East Anglia)
“The Feminine Touch”: Elsie Codd and Transnational Film Journalism
Luca Mazzei (Università Roma Due)
The Smartest Spectator: Angelina Buracci and Italian Cinema of the 1910s
Panel 8B / Socio-political Issues / Moderator: Mark Lynn Anderson (University of Pittsburgh)
Alison Griffiths (CUNY – Baruch College)
Women, Prisons, and the Silent Screen
Martin F. Norden (University of Massachusetts)
Alice Guy-Blaché, Rose Pastor Stokes, and the Birth-Control Film That Never Was
Tricia Welsch (Bowdoin College)
In the Family Way: Early Female Stars and Parenthood
Madeleine Bernstoff (Universität der Künste Berlin)
Women on Strike: The Figure of the Suffragette in Silent Comedies
Dunja Dogo (Università di Siena)
The Image of an Old Revolutionary in Soviet Propaganda: Vera Figner and the Women’s Liberation Movement in The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
Panel 8C / Representations / Moderator: Annette Förster (Utrecht Universiteit)
Luciana Correa de Araujo (Universidade Federal de São Carlos)
Movie Prologues: Cinema, Theatre and Female Types on Stage at Rio de Janeiro Cinelandia
Shelleen Greene (University of Wisconsin)
Cabiria’s Masters and Slaves: Race, Libidinal Investment and the New Roman Empire
Lucia Di Girolamo (Università di Firenze)
Sirens: Female Images and Roles in Neapolitan Cinema
Jana Ostyn (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Female and Formal Ambiguity in the Serial Queen Melodrama: Fatal Testcase for Feminist Film Theory?
Lynne Elizabeth Bond (Southern Illinois University)
Rescue Me: The Filmic Beginnings of the ‘Damsel in Distress’ in Pirate Films through 1926
11:15 am / Coffee Break
11:45 am / Plenary Session: Keynote Address
Heide Schlüpmann (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main)
An Alliance Between Theory and History
12:45 pm / Lunch
2:15 pm / Plenary Session: New Interrogations, New Archives / Moderator: Jane Gaines (Columbia University)
Giuliana Muscio (Università di Padova)
Multiple Sources for Women’s Film History
Mark Garrett Cooper (University of South Carolina)
Amateur Filmmaking Amidst the Institutions, the Case of Claudia Lea Phelps
Yiman Wang (University of California, Santa Cruz)
The Lady Vanishes: On the Archive Drive for a Feminist Ethnic Cinema
Aimee Dixon (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The Historiography of Early African-American Filmmakers
Kay Armatage (University of Toronto)
The Archive Gone Viral
4:20 pm / Final Remarks: Monica Dall’Asta (Università di Bologna), Cristina Jandelli (Università di Firenze)
4:35 pm / Coffee Break
5:00 – 6:00 pm / Women and Film History International Society Meeting
Popularity: 31% [?]
