Disputed Realities: Reframing the Real

The essays in this anthology participate in the Humanities' long-standing engagement with imaginary worlds and their relationship to lived experience. In a contemporary cultural climate increasingly marked by contested facts and competing narratives, the Humanities play a crucial role in interrogating how realities are constructed. Thus, the contributions in this volume explore how literary, linguistic, cinematic, and cultural practices help navigate, assess, and influence both political and personal understandings of the "real." The anthology is organized into four sections exploring how fictional worlds shape our conception of reality, fiction, truth, and visibility. The final section considers how language usage in the classroom and in media simulates and redefines linguistic "realities."

For more than thirty years, the Southeast Conference for Languages, Literatures and Film (SCFLLF) has been a premier platform for the discussion and dissemination of the latest scholarship in the Humanities, with an emphasis on non-English area studies. The current volume showcases some of the most impactful papers originally presented at the 26th Southeast Conference for Languages, Literatures, and Film (SCFLLF), held on February 22-23, 2025, at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.

Margit Grieb is Associate Professor of German and Film at the University of South Florida. She has published a monograph on the intersections of film and new media and articles and chapters that cover various subjects within the broader fields of film, new media, videogames, popular culture, and language pedagogy.

Will Lehman is Professor of German and Chair of the Department of World Languages at Western Carolina University. He has published articles and book chapters about the German filmmaker Werner Herzog, as well as various articles related to second language acquisition and classroom technology.

Yves-Antoine Clemmen is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Stetson University. His research areas include general linguistics, 20th- and 21st-century Francophone literature, contemporary Franco-phone Belgian writers, and Grand-Guignol Theatre.