The international conference Melancholia: Imaging the End of the World will present papers on a broad spectrum of issues and historical moments that engage critically with the topic of Visions of the End of the World, in film, television and digital media.

The conference is presented by the Philipps University Marburg and the Central Connecticut State University. There will be screenings of featured movies (Melancholia, Dr. Strangelove and Take Shelter) and discussions with international hosts. For example:

Karen Randell (Southampton Solent University, UK)
Melancholia & Melodrama in Silent Cinema after World War I

Clémentine Tholas-Disset (Paris East Créteil University)
World War I and Hollywood’s first modern Armageddon:
understanding wartime and post-conflict representations of
aglobal cataclysm in Civilization (1916) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

Scott Loren, St. Gallen (Switzerland) Can Disaster Films be feminine? Lars von Trier’s challenge to the male gaze

Katherine Sugg (Central Connecticut State University, USA) A Sense of Ending: Apocalyptic Imaginaries in White Masculinity in the Frontier Fantasies of Deadwood and Firefly

Date and place: June 5 to 7, 2013 at the Philipps University in Marburg

All information can be found on the Website.