June 17, 2026

Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France

Deadline: January 28, 2026

In echo to Gayatri Spivak and her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1999), this Graduate Workshop would like to explore the question: Can the silenced be heard and made audible? More precisely, to what extent can cinema and audiovisual media be used to counter various processes of silencing that have led to the erasure of certain peoples and communities, notably to reconfigure what Jacques Rancière (2000) calls the “distribution of the sensible”, allowing another politics of aesthetics to emerge? Or, on the contrary, to redouble efforts to silence by claiming that it is the norm that is currently being silenced? This Graduate Workshop is an invitation to approach the question of silence and silencing in terms of both aesthetics (including the distribution and organization of sounds and the underlying hierarchy they imply) and politics (the distribution of speech, the processes of silencing, or the foregrounding of previously unheard, discarded voices), and their intricate ethical relationships. 

What cannot be heard is often what is silenced. How do cinema and audiovisual media in general work to reinforce or, on the contrary, to counter the inaudibility and invisibility of some people or topics? To what extent can the use of sounds and silences be reconfigured to create a space of emergence for the voices of those who are not heard or whom we refuse to hear? In short, who gets to occupy the auditive spaces? While silence can operate as an instrument of oppression, it can also be considered as a site of political resistance against rational speech and should not be equated  with the absence of sound. Can films, TV series and other audiovisual productions make the unspeakable and inaudible heard?

Find the full call for papers here: https://necs.org/conference/2026/university-of-montpellier-paul-valery.

Early-career researchers from cinema, visual and media studies are invited to submit proposals for contributions by 28 January 2026 to graduates@necs.org. The submission should include the name of the speaker, an email address, the title of the paper, an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short bio (max. 150 words). In addition to articles, scholarly film submissions are also welcome (max. length 15 minutes). Université de Montpellier 3 Paul-Valéry will not provide funding: participants are required to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses. Travel information, as well as a list of affordable hotels and other accommodation, will be provided on the conference website and program. The Workshop attendance is free, but valid membership in the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) is required to participate.