Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2013 Conference Papers and Contributions Online

            Film Studies and Videographic Assemblage A Video Presentation by Catherine Grant for the S23 Workshop "Writing with Video: Beyond the Illustrated Text", Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, March 6-10, 2013.

[Catherine Grant's introduction to the above video:] My presentation to this workshop has a somewhat strange take on the notion of the capacity of "video-writing" to move beyond the "illustrated text". The video it presents (embedded above) not only uses a good deal of text, but was also originally inspired by the idea of audiovisually amplifying, or supplementing, a long pre-existing written study of Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope.
    What making it demonstrated to me is that, in scholarly settings, even the simplest videographic act of presenting an assemblage of compiled film sequences involves medium-specific forms of argumentation, for example, the selection and presentation of audiovisual evidence, montage and mise en scene, titling, sound editing and other creative effects, all aiming to draw from "a broader notion of pathos, logos, and ethos than that which has been reified in the age of print literacy", as Virginia Kuhn has put it.* The result is not only the creation of an audiovisual argument, therefore, but also, importantly, of an active viewing space for live co-research - a framed experience of participant observation which, particularly through its online distribution, dialogically invites responses (including rebuttals!) through forms of remix. [Also see
Bonus Tracks: The Making of Touching the Film Object and Skipping ROPE (Through Hitchcock’s Joins) and Déjà-Viewing?Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies]
    *Kuhn, Virginia. 2012. "The Rhetoric of Remix." In "Fan/Remix Video," edited by Francesca Coppa and Julie Levin Russo, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9. Online at dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2012.0358.

S23 Workshop chaired by Virginia Kuhn (University of Southern California), with presentations by Vicki Callahan, Catherine Grant, Michael Lachney, Virginia Kuhn and Cheryl Ball. The workshop was sponsored by the Media Literacy and Pedagogical Outreach Scholarly Interest Group. The full 2013 SCMS Conference Program PDF is here.

Film Studies For Free is happy to present links to some resources pertaining to papers or presentations at the (recently concluded) annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.

FSFF's author's own contribution to the conference, embedded and pasted in above, was part of a workshop panel on "Writing with Video" (see all of the assets from this workshop gathered by Virginia Kuhn here). In the end, this year -- for the same reasons it's been so quiet at this blog (major, unexpected construction work taking place at home at the same time as a very busy semester!) -- she was unable to travel to the US to attend this final session of the conference in person. But, thanks to the wonders of modern technology her work was kindly presented in absentia by her fellow panelists. Among these, Vicki Callahan and Michael Lachney presented on their pedagogical practices around teaching video argumentation as part of multimedia literacy programmes. In particular, Callahan discussed her classroom use of online video collaborative authoring tools including WeVideo. Cheryl Ball discussed her experience as editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy (see Ball's fabulous essay for Kairos on digital scholarship here). And workshop chair Virginia Kuhn presented on her highly innovative large scale video analysis project, a wonderful example of the potential for humanities supercomputing (also see here).

Below are links to a whole host of further conference contributions, mostly collected via Twitter. Thanks very much to those who supplied the links. If you have posted your own SCMS paper online, or know of others not gathered below, please leave the link in a comment. Thank you!

SCMS Digital Humanities J23 Workshop 5_8_13 from scms at livestream.com. Featuring Miriam Posner, Jason Mittell (see below for his paper), Hannah Goodwin, Jasmijn Van Gorp, Jason Rhody and Eric Faden

• Tyler Bickford, '“The Best of Both Worlds”: Hannah Montana, “having it all,” and postfeminist tween domesticity' (Thanks to Anthony C Bleach for the link)
• Shane Denson, 'Crazy Cameras, Discorrelated Images, and the Post-Perceptual Mediation of Post-Cinematic Affect'
• Theresa Geller, '"The Hardest, The Most Difficult Film:" Todd Haynes’ Safe as Feminist Film Praxis' (Thanks for the link to Julia Leyda)
• Richard Grusin, 'Post-Cinematic Atavism'
• Justin Horton, 'Disembodiment and Ecstatic Perception in The Tree of Life' 
• Amanda Ann Klein, '“To Dance Again!”: Affect, Genre, and the HARRY POTTER Franchise'
• Julia Leyda, 'Playing with Dolls: Girls and Fans in Velvet Goldmine'
• James MacDowell, 'Value, Intention, and the Aesthetics of "So Bad It's Good"'
• Jason Mittell, 'Mapping a Pluralistic Field: What Does Television Studies Really Look Like?' 
• Munib Rezaie, 'The New Chinese Mainstream? Dayyan Eng and Ning Hao’s Appeal for Young Urban Moviegoers in the People’s Republic of China' (Thanks to Justin Horton for the link)
• Steven Shaviro, 'Response to panel on “primordigital cinema,” with talks by Jonathan Freedman, Richard Grusin, and Selmin Kara'
• Chuck Tryon, 'Families are Complicated: Netflix Kids, Personalization, and Digital Delivery'
• María A. Vélez-Serna, 'Film distribution in Scotland in the 1910s: A case study in artificial scarcity as institutional strategy'
• Neil Verma, 'Sound Studies at SCMS 2013'

Also see:

• SCMS YouTube Channel with lots of videos from the conference
• SCMS Annual Conference Live: Chicago 2013 Blogs (by Alexander Cho, Alexandra Juhasz, Chuck Kleinhans, Raquel Gates and Tim Havens)
• Suzanne Scott, 'Distanced Learning: SCMS as MOOC (massively open online conference)'

B for Bad Cinema: Colloquy from Monash

Image from Snakes on a Plane (David R. Ellis, 2006); Read Kirsten Stevens's article Snakes on a Plane and the prefabricated cult film' (pdf) from the new issue of Colloquy

It's going to continue to be a little quiet around here at Film Studies For Free as its author busies herself with finishing off a couple of video essays that will be posted here very shortly.

The essays will also form the basis of two talks to be given in the next few weeks: on March 8 at Liverpool John Moores University; and on March 17 at the University of Sussex (details to follow).

The title of both talks, as per the following abstract, is:

Quote/Unquote? The "Unattainable [Film] Text" in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Following the lead of scholars Christian Keathley, Eric Faden, Jason Mittell, Andrew Miller and Craig Cieslikowski in the summary of their conference panel on The Scholarship of Sound and Image: Producing Media Criticism in the Digital Age (MIT6, Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission, April 24-26, 2009), in this talk Catherine Grant will revisit Raymond Bellour's essay on 'The Unattainable Text' (Screen, Vol 16, No 3, 1975: 19-27), as well as Laura Mulvey's more recent considerations of film 'possession', and 'pensiveness' in the digital age (Death 24x a Second (London: Reaktion, 2006). Then she will examine the issue of film quotation in audiovisual work, as well as, more generally, the possibilities offered to film studies by the rising generation of online digital-video essays about films and film theory.

To sustain FSFF's terribly loyal readers until then, here's news (via David Hudson @theauteursdaily) of a wonderful e-journal special issue entitled B for Bad Cinema. All the film-related contents are linked to below. Enjoy! It has some particularly choice items on horror cinema, as well as on David Lynch and Lars von Trier.

This usually indefatigable blog will be back properly soon. In the meantime you can continue to follow its much more succinct recommendations on Twitter courtesy of @filmstudiesff.

All articles are in pdf format. To download the whole issue as one file, click Issue 18.
Front
Contents
Editorial

B for Bad Cinema from Colloquy (Monash University), Issue 18, December 2009

• Introduction: B for Bad Cinema Julia Vassilieva and Claire Perkins

• Excremental Ecstasy, Divine Defecation and Revolting Reception: Configuring a Scatological Gaze in Trash Filmmaking Zoe Gross

• “They don’t call ’em exploitation movies for nothing!”: Joe Bob Briggs and the Critical Commentary on I Spit on Your Grave Tristan Fidler

• Erasing the B out of Bad Cinema: Remaking Identity in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Craig Frost

• “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film Phoebe Fletcher

• Their Time Has Come: Bad Cinema Nerds as Late-Capitalist Paradigm Mark Steven

• Snakes on a Plane and the prefabricated cult film Kirsten Stevens

• “Bad Form”: Contemporary Cinema’s Turn to the Perverse. David Lynch: Lost Highway (1997) Lars von Trier: Breaking the Waves (1996) Hester Joyce and Scott Wilson

• The Other Side of Indonesia: New Order’s Indonesian Exploitation Cinema as Cult Films Ekky Imanjaya

• Doing It for the Kids: Rebels and Prom Queens in the Cold War Classroom Film Anika Ervin-Ward

• Family Demons: The Ghost as Domestic Inheritance Donna McRae

• B for Bad, B for Bogus and B for Bold: Rupert Kathner, The Glenrowan Affair and Ned Kelly Stephen Gaunson

• Horror-Ritual: Horror Movie Villains as Collective Representations, Uncanny Metaphors and Ritual Transgressors Mario Rodriguez

• From Kracauer to Clover: Some Reflections on Genre and Gender in 70s/80s Slasher Films Tyson Namow

Ten Monday Must Visits

Some great (recent) reading, listening, and viewing links with which to begin the week - from (a far too chilled out for its own good) Film Studies For Free:

• Paul Bowman, 'The Fantasy Corpus of Martial Arts' (essay draft), Cultural Studies, June 25, 2009
• Vicki Callahan, 'Interview with Joan Myers on her research regarding Virginia Rappe and Fatty Arbuckle', Feminism 3.0, July 2, 2009 podcast and slideshow
• Dublin2009, 'From Robin Wood to Robin Askwith', [Opening post from new blogspot] From Robin Wood to Robin Askwith: Explorations in British Film, July 2, 2009
• Ed Howard's superb idea for a new blog, The Film Blog Calendar, July 1, 2009 (great listings of notable blog events)
• Dan Jardine, 'My Year in Film Studies Part 1', Cinemania, June 29, 2009
• Jason Mittell, 'Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory', Just TV, July 3, 2009
• Meaghan Morris, 'Banality in Cultural Studies', Cultural Studies, June 8, 2009
• Anne Helen Petersen, 'Everything Old is New, Everything New is Old [on the history and study of celebrity gossip]', Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style - proto-scholastic musings on star studies 2.0, June 9, 2009
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'GERTRUD as Nonnarrative: The Desire for the Image', JonathanRosenbaum.com, July 5, 2009
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Do the Right Thing Is About More Than Just Race', The L Magazine, July 4, 2009 Video essay (also see HERE)
  

So you want to study television? Free sample introductions to TV and 'Small Screen' studies

As a follow up to yesterday's post on online introductions to film studies (and to a positive flurry of email responses to it), Film Studies For Free (a veritable addict of screens of all sizes) brings you a list of links to exemplary, freely-available, online essays, sample book chapters, and other resources, all of which give a very rich sense indeed of what it is like to study different kinds of television and related media at university or college. The list begins with the most accessible resources.

• Museum of Broadcast Communications - 'Television Studies' Guide
• Jason Mittell, ' Introduction: Why Television?', Television and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Companion Website/Resource Center. See Mittell's blog Just TV HERE; and also see Henry Jenkins' great interview with Mittell part one HERE and part two HERE.
  
• Glen Creeber, Toby Miller and John Tulloch (eds), The Television Genre Book (BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan, 2e, 2009): Chapter on DRAMA (including Studying Television Drama (G.W.Brandt/J.Tulloch) – Robin Nelson; The Single Play (The Wednesday Play/Play for Today) – Glen Creeber; The Western (Alias Smith and Jones) – William Boddy (Deadwood– Glen Creeber); The Action Series (Man from UNCLE/Avengers) –Toby Miller (24– Glen Creeber); The Crime Series (Hill Street Blues) – Lez Cooke (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) (The Sopranos– Glen Creeber) ; Hospital Drama (ER) – Jason Jacobs; Science Fiction (Star Trek) – Luke Hockley(The X-Files– Catherine Johnson),(Doctor Who– Matt Hills); Drama–Documentary (Cathy Come Home/The Day After) – John Corner; The Mini-Series (Roots/The Singing Detective) – Glen Creeber; Costume Drama (Jane Austen Adaptations) – Robin Nelson; The Teen Series – Rachel Moseley (Buffy the Vampire Slayer– Cathy Johnson); Postmodern Drama (Twin Peaks) – Adrian Page (Ally McBeal – Robin Nelson),(Heroes– Glen Creeber) note: a large file so slow to download but well worth the wait)
• Jeremy G. Butler, 'Chapter 13: Television Studies: Alternatives to Empirical Approaches', Television: Critical Methods and Applications, 3rd Edition (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, September 2006) and Companion Website
• Paul Bowman,'Introduction: Deconstructing "the Popular"’, Deconstructing ‘the Popular' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies For Small Screen Fictions - Resources Website
• John Caldwell, 'Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the culture of conglomeration (excerpt) from Lyn Spigel and Jan Olson (eds), Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Duke University Press, 2004)
• Susan Holmes, "'The Only Place Where ''Success'' Comes before ''Work'' Is in the Dictionary...?': Conceptualising Fame in Reality TV." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). 11 May. 2009
• Maire Messenger Davies, 'Chapter 1: Children and Broadcasting in the 1990s', 'Dear BBC' Children, Television Storytelling and the Public Sphere (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
• Tania Modleski, 'The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas - Notes on a feminine narrative form' from Charlotte Brunsdon and Lyn Spigel (eds), Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader (Open University Press/McGraw Hill, 2007)
• Nitesh Rohit, 'Cinema/Television in India- a story of images', IndianAuteur.com - Winds from theEast, November 30, 2008
  

If there any other relevant websites or sample introductory book chapters out there that FSFF has inadvertently omitted from this list, please feel free to email with information. (last updated May 12 2009)