CFP Anxiety of Arrival: Travel, Displacement, and Disillusionment in A24 Cinema (Panel) (Virtual) (9/30/2025; NeMLA)

The Anxiety of Arrival: Travel, Displacement, and Disillusionment in A24 Cinema (Panel)

Submit proposals to https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21793

Primary Area / Secondary Area
Cultural Studies and Media Studies

Modality
Virtual Only: All presentations will be delivered via Zoom regardless of whether the presenters are in-person.

Chair(s)
Erica Dymond (East Stroudsburg University)

Abstract

In A24’s diverse filmography, travel is rarely about leisure. Whether it’s a pilgrimage to a Swedish commune, a spring break turned descent into nihilism, or a desperate cross-country hustle for survival, movement across space often signals a deeper unraveling of self. This panel invites papers that examine the recurring theme of travel and destination in A24 films — both literal and psychological — and how journeys function as catalysts for crisis, transformation, or dissolution.

We welcome submissions that explore topics including (but not limited to):

• The tourist as interloper: ethnographic violence in Midsommar, The Farewell, or A Prayer Before Dawn
• Bodies out of place: the discomfort of gender, race, class, or cultural identity in transit (Zola, American Honey, The Green Knight)
• Internal journeys via external landscapes: psychic displacement in Beau Is Afraid, The Lighthouse, Enemy
• Travel as performance: aspirational identity and American mythos in Lady Bird, Spring Breakers, or The Bling Ring
• Liminal space horror: encountering the uncanny “elsewhere” (Men, Under the Skin, The Hole in the Ground)

A24’s travel narratives reveal an undercurrent of anxiety about crossing borders — geographic, personal, or moral. This panel seeks to unpack the aesthetic, thematic, and philosophical stakes of these journeys. How do these films reflect contemporary anxieties around mobility, belonging, and spectacle? Where do we go when we leave home — and can we ever come back?

Description
This panel explores how travel and destination in A24 films—whether across physical landscapes or inner terrain—serve as catalysts for crisis, transformation, and identity unraveling, revealing deep anxieties around movement, belonging, and the boundaries of the self.


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