Inventing Film Studies

Inventing Film Studies

  • Author: Grieveson, Lee; Wasson, Haidee; Anderson, Mark
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822342892
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822388678
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2008
  • Month: November
  • Pages: 480
  • DDC: 791.43071/073
  • Language: English
Inventing Film Studies offers original and provocative insights into the institutional and intellectual foundations of cinema studies. Many scholars have linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material and institutional forces—both inside and outside of the university—that have long shaped the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and intellectual milieus in which knowledge of cinema has been generated. The contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous influence on the methodologies, curricula, modes of publication, and professional organizations that now constitute the university-based discipline. Extending the historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study might take in changing technological and cultural environments.

Inventing Film Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of institutions, technologies, practices, individuals, films, books, government agencies, pedagogies, and theories. Contributors illuminate the connections between early cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts, and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together, the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film studies.

Contributors: Charles R. Acland, Mark Lynn Anderson, Mark Betz, Zoë Druick, Lee Grieveson, Stephen Groening, Haden Guest, Amelie Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Laura Mulvey, Dana Polan,
D. N. Rodowick, Philip Rosen, Alison Trope, Haidee Wasson, Patricia White, Sharon Willis,
Peter Wollen, Michael Zryd

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson The Academy and Motion Pictures
  • Making Cinema Knowable
    • Lee Grieveson Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct
    • Mark Lynn Anderson Taking Liberties: The Payne Fund Studies and the Creation of the Media Expert
    • Zoë Druick “Reaching the Multimillions”: Liberal Internationalism and the Establishment of Documentary Film
    • Dana Polan Young Art, Old Colleges: Early Episodes in the American Study of Film
  • Making Cinema Educational
    • Haidee Wasson Studying Movies at the Museum: The Museum of Modern Art and Cinema’s Changing Object
    • Charles R. Acland Classrooms, Clubs, and Community Circuits: Cultural Authority and the Film Council Movement, 1946–1957
    • Michael Zryd Experimental Film and the Development of Film Study in America
    • Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen From Cinephiliato Film Studies
  • Making Cinema Legible
    • Haden Guest Experimentation and Innovation in Three American Film Journals of the 1950s
    • Philip Rosen Screen and 1970s Film Theory
    • Amelie Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Patricia White, and Sharon Will is (Re)Inventing Camera Obscura
    • Mark Betz Little Books
  • Making and Remaking Cinema Studies
    • Alison Trope Footstool Film School: Home Entertainment as Home Education
    • D. N. Rodowick Dr. Strange Media, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Film Theory
  • Appendix: Stephen Groening Timeline for a History of Anglophone Film Culture and Film Studies
  • Selected Bibliography
  • About the Contributors
  • Index

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