CFP: Women and the Silent Screen XIII, “Transitions,” June 8-11, 2027
The 2027 Women and Film History International conference committee is thrilled to announce the Thirteenth International Women and the Silent Screen Conference: “Transitions,” to be held at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City from June 8 to 11, 2027.
Deadline for Proposals: October 21, 2026
The silent film era’s manifold shifts toward synchronous sound production approximately a century ago make the topic of “transitions” and cinema ripe for critical engagement from feminist, queer, trans, and decolonial perspectives. Women and the Silent Screen XIII invites presentations that address such instances of change, movement, and transformation across various geographical, economic, technological, aesthetic, cultural, social, political, and personal contexts. Transitions can be big or small, literal or conceptual, gradual or abrupt, organic or manufactured, chosen or imposed, liberating or destabilizing. They might be discerned at the level of diegesis, form, and/or identity and representation. We can also think of them in terms of the intermedial, interdisciplinary, and transnational careers of women artists, writers, technicians, performers, and filmmakers, and across industrial, experimental, or amateur filmmaking practices. Transitions can orient attention to diverse, boundary-crossing, and diasporic shifts in relation to cinema, as well as retrain our attention to the ever-changing dynamics within it.
WFHI is excited to return to Mexico, twenty years after the 2006 Women and the Silent Screen IV in Guadalajara. Holding the conference in Mexico once again prompts new reflections on the notion of transitions and how it might help us to rethink and retool feminist silent film historiography in more fluid, transversal, and transformative terms, in ways that address and challenge time-worn periodizations, as well as geo-political, structural, and linguistic hierarchies. `
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
● Technological, aesthetic, economic, and industrial transitions to sound filmmaking from the perspective of women’s participation in local and international silent cinema industries and cultures
● Choices, challenges, and possibilities for women during the transition to sound filmmaking and reception (e.g., industrial, technological, economic, aesthetic, societal, linguistic)
● Case studies on intermedial and/or transnational careers of individual women during the silent era
● Women’s roles in transitions, translations, and transformations of performance, production, and exhibition practices between silent film and other arts, including in costuming, make-up, acting styles, musical and narrational accompaniment, or intermedial screening contexts
● Women’s work in creating formal filmic transitions (e.g., editing, scenic transitions)
● Filmic narratives of transition by or about women in the silent era (e.g., such as themes of migration, institutional shifts, personal change)
● Identities and experiences of transition in the silent era, including gender play and cross-dressing on and off screen
● Notions of fluidity and racialized labor in the silent era, including cross-race casting; blackface, redface, or yellowface; cultural appropriation; and ethnic passing
● Shifts to new forms and modes of critical-creative engagement with women and silent cinema histories (e.g., reflections on and/or experiments in digital humanities projects and data visualization, videographic criticism, practice-based research, and speculative historiography)
● The variable durations and complex or non-linear transitions between the silent era and sound filmmaking, and their negotiations, reverberations, and afterlives in the context of feminist film historiography
● The fluidity of feminist silent film historiography across regional and national boundaries
● Feminist film historiography as a transnational and transitional discipline that can help deconstruct geopolitical hierarchies, colonial legacies, and related periodizations
The organizing committee particularly encourages presentations that take up any of these topics in the Latin American context. `
Presentation Formats
We welcome presentations in a wide range of formats, including but not limited to the following:*
Paper presentation: traditional paper presentation (20 minutes)
Show-and-tell: short presentation of a case study or an archival material, including but not limited to a historical document, a short film or video (fragment and/or video essay), a photograph, etc. (10 minutes)
Screening session: audiovisual presentation of relevant topic, case study, research (ideally 60 min max, but timing may depend on item being screened and can be coordinated with organizing committee)
Pre-formed panel: formed around a single, or similar, research focus; consisting of 3 speakers; may include a moderator (90 minutes max, including Q&A and/or discussion)
Pre-formed roundtable discussion: formed around a single research focus, consisting of 3–4 speakers, responding to each other; may include a moderator (60 minutes max, including Q&A and/or discussion)
Workshop: interactive session formed around a single topic, question, research focus, or creative endeavor with clear goals and a designated leader or leaders (ideally 90 min, but timing may depend on subject and aims of workshop and can be coordinated with organizing committee)
*The organizing committee reserves the right to suggest alternative formats to the proposed presentation format.
Proposal Submission Process
Proposals for individual presentations should include an abstract (300 words max) and short biography (100 words max).
Proposals for pre-constituted panels and roundtables should follow the same format as above but should be submitted together by one participant. Please also include a short description of the panel or roundtable’s focus and the rationale for it (300 words max). Workshop proposals should also be submitted by one individual if there are multiple participants and should include a short description of the structure, aims, and desired outcomes for the session and the rationale for it (300 words max). `
Please submit your proposal by October 21, 2026, via this Google form.
If you have any questions, please email wssmx2027@gmail.com
Proposals may be submitted in English or in Spanish. We hope to secure funding for simultaneous translation services for the conference. Participants may be required to submit drafts of their presentations in advance of the conference.
WFHI will be offering a modest travel grant and registration fee waiver to a graduate student or precariously employed individual without institutional funding. Please indicate in the submission form if you would like to be considered for this grant.
Keep in Mind
While Women and Film History International membership is not required to submit a proposal, anyone presenting at the conference must be a member: https://www.wfhi.org/join.
Conference presenters are also required to pay a conference registration fee, which helps cover organizational costs such as catering, promotion, and translation. The registration rate will be announced soon.
For more information on Women and Film History International, please visit: https://www.wfhi.org