Call for Papers for edited collection

Museum of Dreamworlds: Silent Cinema, Classical Antiquity & the Politics of Representation

*Editors Maria Wyke (UCL) and Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) *

Around 23,000 people gathered in London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1913 during the May Bank Holiday to watch the landmark film Quo vadis?, an Italian feature-length adaptation of an acclaimed Polish novel about religious persecution in the reign of the emperor Nero. They were drawn by advertisements that proclaimed it ‘A story of Ancient Rome before your eyes. 5,000 actors. Real lions. Real chariot races. Real combats in the Circus. The Burning of Rome in its most vivid colours.’ (The Times, 7 May 1913). The film achieved an extraordinary run of four weeks at the prestigious venue in addition to its wide-spread exhibition in metropolitan and provincial cinemas across the UK. A ‘private’ visit to see it by King George V and Queen Mary was widely reported, and their patronage subsequently used to attract audiences when the film toured the empire. A few months earlier, struck with admiration for the historical realism of this new release, the British trade magazine The Bioscope (20 February 1913) claimed ‘its value, educationally, is thus of paramount importance; indeed, it probably presents a clearer and truer portrait of a vanished age than has ever yet been presented by other means whatsoever’. The AHRC-funded research project Museum of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity Films in the BFI National Archive (2023–27) is investigating this sort of phenomenon - how silent cinema rendered Greco-Roman antiquity a powerfully immersive dreamworld and, conversely, how antiquity helped cinema claim status as an educative artform. The project is systematically investigating all the BFI prints concerning Greco-Roman antiquity, including the archival, historical, and contemporary contexts in which these moving images circulate and are interpreted

Even though we are working with archival material, the project is called Museum of Dreamworlds to emphasize our desire to lift these films off the shelves, breathe new life into them, and make them visible—much as a museum works to animate its treasures. In this spirit, we aim to put together an edited volume that gathers a selection of expanded papers from our project events, alongside fresh scholarly contributions that critically engage with the encounter of silent cinema with classical antiquity and the reverberations of that encounter across film history, media theory, and related fields.

Through the edited collection, we seek to construct a museum of dreamworlds, offering a space for authors to explore and give voice to these moving image versions of antiquity, even amidst a culture defined by the paradox of rapid consumption and ever-shifting visual landscapes. In line with our project aims, we ask that contributions engage with at least one or two silent antiquity films for which the BFI National Archive has prints but contributions can certainly range beyond them. A list of those prints (and details of those to which we might be able to provide digital access if needed) is available on our project website: .

We invite contributions that reflect on the modern reception of classical antiquity, the transnational history of silent cinema, and the evolving politics of representation in both historical and contemporary visual culture. We welcome essays that examine how silent antiquity films construct and reconstruct archives, how they provoke discussion and debate, and how shifting social, political, and digital landscapes shape the ways their images are seen and understood. We especially encourage submissions from early career researchers, from diverse disciplinary perspectives, and ones that push boundaries—rethinking silent cinema, classical reception, and the politics of visual archives for the twenty-first century. Contributions may embrace new ways of looking, new digital methodologies, and experimental formats, reflecting the changing worlds of moving images and their ongoing cultural, political, and pedagogical relevance.

Suggested topics for contributions include, but are not limited to:

• The relationship between antiquity films and their points of origin (whether in primary texts, material artefacts, scholarship, literature, performance or the visual arts).
• Theatricality, realism, and expressionism.
• Representations of romance and affective relationships.
• Space and time, how silent cinema constructs, manipulates, or disrupts temporal and spatial frameworks in narrative and visual form.
• Filmic architecture and representation, including set design, mise-en-scène, and the spatial logic of silent cinema.
• Education and entertainment, including how antiquity films balanced didactic and pleasurable modes of viewing.
• Colonialism and how it intersects with cinematic form and cultural ideology.
• Nationalism and transnationalism, examining how silent antiquity films circulated, claimed identity, or engaged audiences across borders.
• Comparative studies across countries, cinematic genres, antiquities represented, or periods of production within the silent era, considering stylistic and ideological differences.
• Comparative studies that consider relationships and differences between the antiquity films of the silent era and those that have come thereafter in diverse screen media.
• Publicity, related to image building, past/present, star construction, design history, gender, clichés, national/transnational identity, the ‘glocal’.
• Heritage, both as represented within the films (e.g., classical antiquity, historical monuments) and as embodied in the films themselves as archival or cultural objects.
• Archival recovery and the status of lost, fragmented or restored films, including the ethical and methodological challenges of reconstruction, the digital turn and online curation.
• Exhibitions concerning antiquity that utilise cinematic structures or interlock moving images with material culture.
• Pedagogical approaches and teaching strategies using silent films concerned with Greco-Roman antiquity.

Submission Guidelines:

We invite proposals for chapters of c. 6,000–8,000 words (including footnotes and bibliography). Proposals should be sent to Maria Wyke m.wyke@ucl.ac.uk by 9 February 2026 and include:

• Title of the proposed book chapter
• Abstract of approx. 300-500 words
• Up to five bibliographic references
• A short biography (max. 150 words), including institutional affiliation
• Contact details

Applicants will be informed of the outcome by 9 March 2026. If accepted, a first draft of the chapter will be expected by October 2026.
If you have any questions concerning this call, do contact Maria Wyke.