Call for Papers: Screenwriting Pedagogies

The screenplay occupies a singular position within the field of film and audiovisual studies, simultaneously functioning as a narrative text, a production document, and a structuring device of the audiovisual work. This hybrid condition highlights the centrality of the screenplay in articulating creation, production, and circulation, while also opening up a field of inquiry that is still in development, particularly with regard to its pedagogical dimensions.

In this dossier, the expression “screenwriting pedagogies” is not limited to formal teaching practices, but refers to the set of processes, devices, and discourses through which screenwriting is transmitted, learned, and standardized across different cultural, institutional, and industrial contexts. In this sense, the term also highlights broader formative contexts that shape the conceptions and social representations of the screenwriter, the poetics of the screenplay, the conditions of professional practice, the regulation of work, and the dynamics of training, updating, and professional specialization. Although the international literature employs terms such as screenwriting pedagogy and screenwriting education, research in this area remains dispersed and insufficiently systematized, often subordinated to broader debates on narrative, creation, or audiovisual production. By proposing this designation, the dossier seeks to provide analytical coherence to a heterogeneous set of practices and reflections, contributing to the consolidation of a still emerging field within screenwriting studies.

Screenwriting studies constitute an interdisciplinary field in formation, grounded in matrices derived from literary studies, narratology, film theory, cultural studies, production studies and the audiovisual industry, television studies, seriality and narrative complexity studies, game studies, and research on creative processes. Although this field has been expanding and diversifying, systematic reflections on screenwriting pedagogies remain dispersed, most often emerging as a transversal theme within these approaches, which highlights both the relevance and the critical potential of research specifically dedicated to the education and training of screenwriters.

In the Brazilian and Latin American context, screenwriting pedagogies raise specific issues related to the late institutionalization of film and audiovisual education, regional asymmetries, public policies for training, the unequal circulation of theoretical references, and the need to develop methodologies that are sensitive to cultural, social, and historical diversity.

This dossier proposes to map and problematize the multiple pedagogical dimensions that involve screenwriting, ranging from teaching methodologies in film schools and audiovisual programs to the ways in which screenwriting is disseminated through manuals, workshops, laboratories, digital platforms, and other formative devices. We seek to investigate different aspects and perspectives of these pedagogies, both in the ways they transmit techniques and narrative conventions and in the ways they establish aesthetic canons and participate in the configuration of cultural and audiovisual imaginaries. We welcome contributions that critically reflect on methodologies, pedagogical experiences, interdisciplinary approaches, and creative practices related to the teaching and development of screenplays in diverse educational contexts.

Contributions addressing, among others, the following questions and lines of inquiry will be especially welcome:

• How have screenwriting pedagogies been historically constituted in Brazil, Latin America, and other contexts?
  
  
• Which theoretical frameworks underpin methods of teaching screenwriting, and how do they dialogue with—or come into tension with—contemporary audiovisual creative practices?
  
  
• In what ways do manuals, laboratories, workshops, digital platforms, and public policies participate in the training of screenwriters and in the consolidation of narrative canons?
  
  
• What are the impacts of technological transformations, streaming, serialized, transmedia, and interactive narratives, and the use of artificial intelligence on the teaching and practice of screenwriting?
  
  
• How do gender, race, class, and territory intersect with pedagogical practices in the field of screenwriting?
  
  
• What alternative or experimental methodologies have been developed in screenwriting education, and what are their critical potentials?
  
  
• In what ways have contemporary screenwriting practices in Brazil and Latin America been challenging or reinventing traditional narrative structures, proposing new narrative engines capable of responding to specific historical, political, aesthetic, and cultural contexts?
  
  

By bringing together these contributions, the dossier aims to strengthen screenwriting studies within the broader field of film and audiovisual studies, fostering a plural and interdisciplinary dialogue attentive to local specificities and to the global transformations of narrative, educational, and professional practices.

Keywords: screenwriting; audiovisual pedagogies; film education; audiovisual writing.

 

Submission deadline: June 26, 2026

Editors:
Joanise Levy (Jô Levy) – State University of Goiás (UEG)
Cíntia Langie – Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel)
Maria Carmen Jacob de Souza – Federal University of Bahia (UFBA)