Columbia Press sale

FYI, Columbia University Press is running a 50% sale on all titles. For North American consumers only. I'm not sure of the dates of validity so acting sooner is probably better than later.

2012: The Year That Twitter Broke

I recall that a good number of conference-goers followed the SCMS conference via Twitter last year and undoubtedly some had before. But this year feels different: the SCMS website has prominently displayed the Twitter feed, and even the least networked film-studies people I know followed the feed and discussed it.

I do not use Twitter, so my reactions are colored by that. To my eye, the tweets excel at coordinating meetings, dealing with varying sorts of live information, and quick-capsule synopses of talks. (Catherine Grant's summaries are particularly impressive in scope.) The latter seems like a useful in-between information between title and abstract and helps conference-goers get a sense of panels they are not able to attend.

Maybe because I don't write in such short-form entries, I'm especially impressed when more substantial dialogue manages to happen. And it does happen. Perhaps my favorite insight comes from Jason Mittell: "I think everyone in the field thinks that their approach is marginal, other approaches are hegemonic." These back-and-forth comments perform useful traces of disciplinary conversation. Of course, I agree with Rick Prelinger, that the coverage is "skewed and asymmetric." New media, TV studies, and media industries panels got much more discussion than less contemporary-oriented subfields, and this expresses the varying social media usage in the field.

Moreover, the substantive conversations were about the process of scholarship, about digital humanities, and about Twitter itself. I come away from the conference thinking that Twitter is less useful in deliberating about our object of study than in aiding a meta-deliberation about what a disciplinary sphere should be. My take is that the latter project will actually be aided by more of the former.

SCMS 2012: The New Theoretical Return

A first glance through the SCMS program made me think that the Post-Theory crowd had won: many, if not most, of the titles seemed to reflect middle-level research projects, organized around a particular and even narrow object of study. However, a couple of panels made me realize that film theory actually is playing a key role in the conference.

The Where is Film Theory Now? workshop was interesting both for its constellation of polemics and its popularity. By my estimation, about 75 people packed into the room, and a certain energy was palpable for what in effect was an unofficial inauguration of a Contemporary Film Theory scholarly interest group. The workshop participants all spoke to varying aspects of the phenomenon of what I'll call the New Theoretical Return: Philip Rosen; Elena Gorfinkel; Caetlin Benson-Allot; John David Rhodes; Damon Young and chair Scott Richmond. They nor those in the audience presented a unified vision of where film theory is (going) today, but a few trends emerged:

- misgivings with the Historical Turn in film studies. This ran the gamut, from productive tension - Elena Gorfinkel discussed her intellectual biography of working through history to get at theoretical questions - to outright hostility to conventional historiography, which a few people felt lacked the ambitious to ask big questions that theory does.

- generational divide. Not everyone belonged to the same generation, but a good plurality of attendees seemed to be those who finished their PhD in the 2000s or are currently in grad school. Their comments moreover pitched the New Theoretical Return as an explicit rejection of the methodological hegemony of a previous generation of scholars.

- style and process: particularly those involved with the World Picture journal laid out the case not only for theoretical approaches but also a process that resists the form and disciplinarily of historical scholarship. They made the case for alternatives to peer-review, for speculative research, and for writing foreground stylistic play.

Regular readers of my blog know that I have an investment in film theory but even so do not agree with all of the above. One thing I'll point out is that the conversation seemed to be a dialogue with a branch of the field that was largely absent from the room.

This point was highlighted for me when I attended a panel the following morning on "Managing Cinema's Economy" in which Charlie Keil gave a historical paper on Famous Players' management grounded in archival research, while Marc Cooper made an argument about accounting practices, drawing on aesthetic theory and the Frankfurt School. Here, history and theory were in dialogue - in between the two papers but also in the audience questions. Many attendees actually asked questions to both, engaging both theoretical and historical argument. To me, that was a far more utopian vision of what the field could do than a defenestration in the cause of the speculation or aestheticized scholarship.

Carnival in Costa Rica

I expected a spectacle travelogue from Carnival in Costa Rica (20th-Fox, Gregory Ratoff) and on a basic level, the film did not disappoint: the Good Neighbor cultural condescension is thick and the musical numbers are designed to show off the Technicolor.

What I did not expect was a feature film so similar to others I've been watching in 1947: a low-key comedy-romance-melodrama hybrid wedged halfway between B film and A film aesthetics. Luisa Molina is the daughter of a Costa Rican father and an American mother, and her family wants to arrange a marriage with Pepe Castro. Neither Luisa nor Pepe are excited by the prospect of arranged marriage and prefer their romantic interests instead. The film, therefore, becomes a drama about the coming of modernity and the playing off of gender and class against traditional stricture.

Formally, there are a couple of notable things. First, even this film starts off with the documentary-style shot, with a voiceover narration. However, this narrator is accented and serves more of a self-conscious narrating function. The travelogue aesthetics class with the pseudodocumentary realist aesthetics.

At times, two, there are moments of montage editing for stylistic flourish, as in a rural procession that intercuts close ups of wheels repeatedly.

It is interesting to think of this as a Fox film, if only because of the contrast with their prestige product. This feels closer to the universe of Tycoon than Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

SCMS 2012-bound

I'm heading off today to Boston for the SCMS conference. I'm giving a talk entitled "Hollywood Mannerism" on the first slot Wednesday (!). It's part of a panel on revising Classical assumptions in Hollywood historiography, so I'm excited to hear what my co-presenters have to say.

I will try to blog about the conference and in any case have a backlog of 1947 write-ups, so expect more posting.

CFP: Materiality and Object-Oriented Fandom

Via Bob Rehak:

Call for Papers

Materiality and Object-Oriented Fandom (March 2014)

A special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures on objects and artifacts in media fandom.

Alongside its consumption and transformation of texts, media fandom has always been marked by its consumption and transformation of objects. From superhero figures, model kits, and wargaming miniatures for sale at hobby shops, to costumes and props worn at Comic-Con, material objects and body decoration have functioned as displays of textual affiliation, crafting skills, or collecting prowess, reflecting a long history of fan-created and -circulated artifacts around popular media fictions.

This special issue seeks historically and theoretically informed essays that explore the role of objects and their associated practices in fandom, as instances of creativity and consumerism, transformation and affirmation, private archive and public display. We are particularly interested in work that complicates or transcends the binaries of social vs. solitary, artwork vs. commodity, and gift vs. monetary economies to engage with object-oriented fandom as self-aware and playful in its own right.

We welcome submissions dealing with, but not limited to, the following topics:

• creating and collecting, buying and selling fan artifacts (production artifacts, memorabilia, reference materials, models, material fan art, and fan crafts…)
• cosplay (creating costumes and other artifacts, performing cosplay, competitions…)
• fan enactments, events, and embodiment (Renaissance Fairs, Quidditch competitions, re-enactments, fannish tattoos…)
• fan objects as paratext and transmedia extension
• dissemination of skills and abilities (workshops, online blogs, fan meetings…)
• object marketplaces (con, comic-book store, ebay, etsy…)
• evaluation and valuation of artifacts across the various economies of fandom
• impact of digital technologies (including social networking and 3D printing) on object creation, collecting, and cataloging
• new debates over authorship, ownership, and control

Contributions by March 1, 2013 or April 1, 2013, depending on submission type. Full CFP and submission guidelines available at Graphic Engine.

Film Theory and the Problem of Chronology

Jason Sperb has posted a couple of his syllabi, including one for a film theory class. His class has some terrific choices, which are already inspiring me as I fine tune my syllabi for my film theory classes this semester. He's also using the same anthology I'm using, Corrigan, White, and Mazaj's Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford St. Martin's).

I'll post my syllabi soon, but I wanted first to highlight a conceptual issue I've been wrestling with in teaching the film theory class: how much should I arrange a syllabus in chronological order? I don't mean chronology in the strictest sense, in which all writing form 1978 has to come before that from 1985. Rather, I mean organizing the syllabus according to the intellectual history of the field, with identifiable theoretical schools following one after the other. To be honest, this is my first inclination. There are a few reasons, but the biggest is that film theory itself tends to refer to prior schools and works. Even though I really like the Critical Visions anthology and find it a welcome improvement over prior anthologies, I do find it a weakness that the books skips certain conceptual steps and expects students/readers to figure out what semiotics, signification, or the "subject" mean without reading anything that explains these concepts.

Then again, I can imagine the editors would counter that an anthology has to start somewhere, and now that contemporary film theory alone has had a run of roughly 40 years, it's sometimes worth skipping to more current debates rather than have to recreate Cahiers' political thriller debate, Screen's realism debate, or Cinema Journal's melodrama debate.

For me, an additional issue is that I'm teaching mostly production students who are interested in theory but not invested in schematizing overview that one would need for an orals exam or even a journal article. For this reason, this semester I'm trying a more conceptual organization to my syllabus and addressing key problems that film theory tries to answer. I'm not dispensing with chronology altogether - I'm still teaching Bazin before semiotics before cultural studies. But I'm loosening up the focus on intellectual history. Maybe I'll learn that I need to go further.

CFP: Contemporary Screen Narratives

Call for papers:

Contemporary Screen Narratives:

Storytelling’s Digital and Industrial Contexts

Conference to be held on 17 May 2012
Hosted by the Department of Culture, Film and Media, University of Nottingham

Keynote speakers: Henry Jenkins and Jason Mittell

This one-day conference looks to trace connections between the narratives of contemporary screen media and their contexts of production, distribution and consumption. We refer here to narrative as the presentation and organisation of story via the semiotic phenomena of image, sound and written/spoken word. We anticipate that speakers will explore ways in which stories and their on-screen telling are informed by contemporary industrial and technological conditions. We invite contributions from postgraduate and early-career researchers working across screen-based narrative media, such as film, television, comics, literature, video games and other areas of new media. We are interested to receive all paper proposals pertinent to the conference topic, though we particularly welcome those that engage with the following themes and questions:

Industrial determinants. In what ways are stories and their telling contingent on the production cultures, distribution methods, revenue models and governmental policies that configure a given creative industry?

Digital Technologies. How has the construction and/or reception of narratives been influenced by digital production equipment, distribution tech, online platforms and consumer hardware devices?

Seriality and Transmedia: In what ways do serial narrative forms, whether disseminated within a given medium or across multiple media, reflect industrial and technological contexts?

Audio and Visual Styles: How are the sounds and visions of contemporary screen narratives informed by conditions of production and reception technologies?

Paratextual Surround: In what ways do promotional materials, practitioner discourses, fan cultures and critical/journalistic responses discursively frame screen narratives?

Send abstracts of 250 words to Anthony Smith (aaxas4@nottingham.ac.uk) and Aaron Calbreath-Frasieur (aaxac2@nottingham.ac.uk). Papers should not exceed twenty minutes in length. The deadline for proposal submission is Monday 13 February 2012.

For updates, see the conference blog.

The Trouble With Women

It's been tougher for me to track down the Paramount films from 1947, but it is seeming like they tend to specialize in genre films that would not be out of place five or ten years earlier: light comedies, action-adventure films, and "exotic" romances.

The Trouble With Women (Sidney Lanfield) would seem to confirm the notion of the Paramount as a stuck-in-the-30s studio, ignoring the broader changes of postwar aesthetics and ideology in Hollywood films. Whereas other comedies seem to update the screwball formula, The Trouble With Women reprises Bringing Up Baby, with Ray Milland in the bookish Cary Grant role:

The twist, though, is that Milland's character, Prof. Sedley, is a psychoanalyst famous for his counter-intuitive and misogynist theories of female sexuality. To my mind, this points to one of the recurring conventions of the late 40s light comedy: a social satire that cuts both ways. In this case, the film sends up both psychoanalysis and the Babbitt-like reactions of the townspeople to Sedley's ideas.

This dual satire plays out some, too, in the depiction of journalism, though I'm not sure the film departs much from the screwball conventions in this. The Teresa Wright and Brian Donlevy characters are journalists trying to write an expose of Sedley; in the process, they expose mostly their own lack of humanity, but they are still correct in their views.

Donlevy's McBride tries to undergo a social class transformation in the film:
What's striking to me is how the film is poised right at the historical moment of a class transformation of the journalism profession. There are a number of films of the late 40s that seem to be coming to grips with a dying petit bourgeois class.

CFP: Console-ing Passions 2012

Call for Papers

Console-ing Passions

International Conference on

Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism

July 19-22, 2012

Suffolk University

Boston, MA

Founded by a group of feminist media scholars and artists in 1989, Console-ing Passions held its first official conference at the University of Iowa in 1992. Since that time, the conference has created collegial spaces for scholarly and other creative work on culture, identity, gender, and sexuality in television, digital and aural media, and gaming. In this anniversary year, the conference will focus on remembering its roots and forging its future.

Mindful that changes in media platforms and consumption practices have altered the field of feminist media studies, this year’s conference will reflect back on Console-ing Passions’ own history as well as highlight how contemporary research reflects these multiple alterations. Continuing the feminist legacies of the conference, the 2012 program will emphasize intergenerational conversations. To this end, equal emphasis will be placed on the histories, presents, and futures of feminist inquiry.

Organizers of the 2012 conference are seeking proposals for individual papers, preconstituted panels, or workshops on these broad themes investigated within the context of race, class, gender, and sexuality:

· histories and theories of television
· women in media industries
· media and globalization
· user-generated content and new media economies
· social networking
· television genres
· media and gay/lesbian/transgender politics
· gaming and virtual worlds
· media activism
· experimental media histories and criticism
· media spaces and local media
· social movements and global uprisings
· theories of apparatus and interface
· audiences/players/viewers/listeners
· mobile media
· theories of post-television

Deadline for receipt of proposals is January 10, 2012.

Guidelines for Proposal Submission:

Individual Papers: Individuals submitting paper proposals will be asked to provide an abstract of 350 words, a short bio, and contact information.

Pre-Constituted Panel Proposals: In keeping with this year’s theme, we ask that panels attempt to showcase a range of experience in the field; graduate students and junior members are encouraged to pair with senior scholars. Panel coordinators should submit a 200-word rationale for the panel as whole. For each contributor, please submit a 200-word abstract, a short bio, and contact information. Panels should have three to four papers.

Workshop Proposals: We seek workshop ideas that focus not only on scholarly issues in the discipline, but also on matters of professionalization. Topics might include: gender and sexuality in the workplace; teaching feminist media studies; tenure and family; publishing your first article or monograph; moving to full professor or administration; mentoring challenges and opportunities, etc. Coordinators should submit a 350-word rationale for the workshop (including some discussion of why the topic lends itself to a workshop format), a short bio, and contact information. For each workshop participant, please submit a title, short bio, and contact information. Workshops are intended to encourage discussion; contributors should plan on a series of brief, informal presentations.

Screening Proposals: We invite proposals for video, audio, or new media screenings. Proposals should consist of a 500-word abstract (including the length and format of the work), a short bio of the producer/director, and contact information.

Please submit all proposals, via the conference website at http://bit.ly/CPBoston2012

Direct all questions about the conference and the submission process to:
CPBoston2012@gmail.com

Follow us on twitter @CPBoston2012

Conference Organizers:
Miranda Banks, Assistant Professor, Visual and Media Arts Department, Emerson College
Nina Huntemann, Associate Professor, Communication & Journalism Department, Suffolk University
Deborah Jaramillo, Assistant Professor, Film and Television Department, Boston University
Suzanne Leonard, Assistant Professor, English Department, Simmons College
Jane Shattuc, Professor, Visual and Media Arts Department, Emerson College

How To Write About Film History, part I

I am teaching a film history survey. It's only my second time teaching this survey and the first time it's been historically limited (1945-present). One issue I've faced is that this is the first film history course many of the students have taken. As a survey, it's not really a methods class, nor does a larger primary research project seem fitting for this sophomore-level class, but I still want the students to write papers that make historical arguments as part of a research-based project.

To this end, I've developed some guidelines in how to write a film history paper. I thought I'd share them in case anything is useful for other teachers out there, but also I'm open to feedback or tips.

Also, are there guides somewhere that I'm overlooking?

This first part is on coming up with a thesis. The second part, on research, will be in a separate post.

How to Write a Film History Paper: The Thesis

The basics of a thesis

A thesis should make a claim that is not obvious and that one could disagree with. You should be able to put (I intend to prove that) in front of the statement and have it be meaningful. For instance, the following is not much of an original thesis:

(I intend to prove that) The French New Wave was a movement of filmmakers who were inspired by Hollywood.

since few would disagree, but

(I intend to prove that) The French New Wave adopted a trademark black-and-white style because of cost and the influence of photojournalism.

gives a claim that asks the reader to understand the subject differently. (We think of New Wave films in relation to Hollywood, but perhaps Life magazine is just as important.) The thesis could be argued against: for instance, maybe New Wave cinematographers adopted their style mainly because of the need to show on B&W television or as a reaction against Tradition of Quality style. In any case, it's up to the author to present evidence to prove her/his case.

How to come up with a thesis

I have a lot of practice with coming up with thesis statements. It is easier to write a focused, specific thesis if you have read a number of other arguments in the field. Ideally, you should be reading materials for this class (and others) with an eye for figuring out their arguments, not simply absorbing information.

In the meantime, there are a few questions you can ask about your topic to help you come up a thesis:

- Is there some pattern of filmmaking that others haven't written on?
- What historical causes can you pinpoint behind some aspect of a film or group of films?
- Why could this film have only been made when it was made? (If you think the answer is obvious, it's not.)
- How can we think about the film/films as economic products in addition to art or entertainment?

Scope of a thesis

The scope of the paper will determine the length it takes to provide enough evidence. If the thesis is broad, a shorter paper will be too general. For a 5-6 page paper, narrow down your argument. You won't be able to talk about a whole movement or period in general. Find, instead, some aspect. You can focus on particular case studies (directors, films, etc) - this approach works better if you can do a little extra research into production, exhibition, or reception of the film.

Or, you can focus on a formal or ideological aspect - like New Wave cinematography (above), screenplay form in 40s Japanese cinema, or racial casting in 80s Hollywood. It's up to you and your creativity - and what's previously been written on the subject.

22nd Screen Conference CFP

The 22nd International Screen Studies Conference is organised by Screen journal and will be programmed by Screen editor Karen Lury.

We invite papers on any topic in screen studies, i.e. cinema, television and digital media. Submissions for pre-formed three-person panels will be considered but not prioritised.

‘Other Cinemas’ will be the subject of the plenaries and will form a strand running throughout the conference.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Charles Acland (Concordia University), editor of Useful Cinema (2011)
Elizabeth Lebas (Middlesex University), author of Forgotten Futures: British Municipal Cinema 1920-1980 (2011)

Looking into the past and the future of cinema has inspired increasing academic interest in films and film-making practices that are generally considered to be outside the ‘mainstream’ of commercial cinema. Screen wishes to encourage presentations that engage with these ‘Other Cinemas’. This might involve:

• ‘Amateur’ films;
• Educational cinema;
• Industrial films;
• Films produced for and distributed via different web platforms;
• Experimental or avant-garde work;
• ‘Sponsored’ films (municipal cinema, health films).

The deadline for proposals is Friday, 13th January 2012.

Please visit the conference site for full submission details.

Movie Title Sequences

At the Notebook, Adrian Curry has a good entry on the title sequences by Jacques Kapralik. Another instance in which the modernism has blinded critics to the art and craft of classicism: "Sure we’ve all swooned over Saul Bass title sequences, and Annyas, of course, has a superb section devoted to them too, but have you ever really considered Warner Brothers end titles before? To see all these cards together is to discover a breadth of type design and handlettering, impeccably and inventively used over and over again." To me this is another instance of the way our understanding of classical Hollywood (and studio-era filmmaking in general) shifts a bit when we approach these films as an archive of films made more accessible through cable TV, home video, bootlegs, and downloads.

Decherney on Public Domain

Peter Decherney has an op-ed in the New York Times on copyright law and public domain. I know this dovetails Peter's larger project on copyright in Hollywood, so it's no surprise to see a good op-ed piece, but it's still nice to see an accessible version of it circulating out in the broader public sphere. Film studies is not a field known for its public policy applications (one of Toby Miller's frequent complaints), but Peter's op-ed shows how what we do (at least the historians among us) illuminates policy issues in a clear, productive way.

Pulling Back the Curtain on Book Writing

I look forward to reading Michael Newman and Elana Levine's new book on TV and cultural legitimization.

In the meantime, Michael has a good post reflecting on the book writing process. This is becoming one of my favorite blog post genres, in fact. Pulling back the curtain not only lets non-scholars know a bit more about what we do (as in Tim Burke's series of posts), but it allows scholars to see each others' work habits and get inspired by each other.