Land Acknowledgment
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LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and, most recently, the territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement among the Iroquois Confederacy and the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. This territory is also covered by the Upper Canada Treaties. Today, the meeting place of Toronto (from the Haudenosaunee word Tkaronto) is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this territory. What is a Land Acknowledgment? A Land Acknowledgment is a formal statement that recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. Why do we recognize the land? To recognize the land is an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory you reside on, and a way of honoring the Indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial. It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land, and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgments do not exist in a past tense, or outside historical context: colonialism is an ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation. It is also worth noting that acknowledging the land is Indigenous protocol. http://www.lspirg.org/knowtheland SCMS asks all panel chairs to please read this statement aloud at the beginning of each session: To begin, we wish to acknowledge this land on which the SCMS conference is taking place. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and, most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. SCMS 2018 CONFERENCE PROGRAM SHERATON CENTRE TORONTO TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA March 14–18 1 Letter from the President Dear 2018 SCMS Conference Attendees, On behalf of the Board of Directors, the Program Committee, the Host Committee, and the staff of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies housed in beautiful downtown Norman, Oklahoma, I welcome you to Toronto! This is the first time the conference is meeting in Toronto, but I am sure that with the fabulous Host Committee and universities that have helped us shape the conference, and the terrific restaurants and amenities—not least the Toronto International Film Festival Lightbox!— this will not be our last. SCMS continues to grow. This year, there will be almost 1900 unique participants in workshops, roundtables, and panels, plus another 350 or so taking part in seminars. The conference has representatives from 599 institutions, located across 40 states in the United States and eight Canadian provinces, plus 33 other countries on five continents. We have added a new Scholarly Interest Group (SIG) on Libraries and Archives and now have a total of 35 SIGs. Our Program Chair Nick Davis and our Executive Director Jill Simpson will each fill you in on many of the special events happening this year. I will just highlight a few. The annual Members Business Meeting will be held Thursday at 9:00 am. This year, we have sent out materials in advance, so that rather than just come hear us talk, we want you to bring us your concerns and questions. Also on Thursday, our Awards ceremony will be at 6:45 pm, with the reception preceding the awards at 5:45 pm, so you can bring your drink to the awards. Please join us to celebrate all our award winners, and to hear our Distinguished Career Achievement Award Winner, Jane Gaines. Friday, we invite chairs from our Institutional Member departments to join us for a special breakfast at 8:30 am. At 10:00 am, we invite everyone to attend a special session with representatives from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as they share Best Practices in Applying for Funds to Support Scholarship. This year, the conference launches its experimental program of seminars. From the wonderful roster of submissions we received and the speed with which the seminars filled, we believe and hope this new format will be a success. Please stick around after the seminars for a coffee break where we hope to get your feedback. After serving as President Elect for two years, this is my first year as President. I am truly honored to serve in the role, and happy to have President Elect Paula J. Massood by my side. As President Elect and before that as a Board member, I have been privileged to serve under Steven Cohan, now my consigliere, who helped shape the presidency in the new era of having an Executive Director; Barbara Klinger, who helped usher in that era; Chris Holmlund, whose work as President as well as her key role in establishing the Queer Caucus, the French/Francophone SIG, the Scandinavian SIG, and Grrrls Night Out will be honored when she receives the Service Award at the Awards ceremony; and the indomitable Patrice Petro, who was in the midst of her extended tenure as President when I first joined the Board. I am humbled to be among all those who went before, back to when this was an organization of “cinematologists,” a group that includes such wonderful leaders and scholars as Robert Sklar, Bill Nichols, Vivian Sobchack, Richard Abel, Peter Lehman, Janet Staiger, Virginia Wright Wexman, Janice Welsch, Lucy Fischer, E. Ann Kaplan, Stephen Prince, and Anne Friedberg. SCMS is a family and community. This year, we lost one of our emergent scholars, Hannah Frank, and one of our most influential and beloved scholars, Chuck Kleinhans, as well as David Pendleton, a well-known programmer with an infectious passion for cinema. We will miss them all and celebrate their lives and work. The SCMS conference always requires a village. I thank the Toronto Host Committee, especially Chair Charlie Keil and Dimitrios Latsis, for their energy, enthusiasm, and brilliant ideas. Theresa Scandiffio at TIFF Lightbox could not have been more helpful or inspiring. Our Program Committee deserves special thanks for choosing so well and so carefully all the workshops, roundtables, and panels we will hear this week. Our sponsors enable us to bring you special events and receptions. The Board of Directors works year round to ensure that not only the conference but also the organization serves our members well. This year, board member Linda Mizejewski finishes her tenure. Thanks for all her hard work, especially in her capacity 2 as SIG liaison. Nick Davis also finishes his work on the board this year. Nick served as Program Chair this year and made that complex and enormous job seem effortless. Vicky Johnson ends her time as Secretary, her second stint on the Board. We will desperately miss her sense of humor and aplomb in the insanity of two-day meetings. Thanks to Will Brooker for his wonderful stewardship of Cinema Journal, which he helped bring much more fully into the digital age, and welcome to Caetlin Benson- Allot who takes on the journal at a crucial moment of transition. Thanks to our webmaster Aviva Dove-Viebahn, and to the home office staff, Molly Youngblood, Bruce Brasell, and Margot Tievant, who make everything run smoothly and with good humor. Thanks to Executive Director Jill Simpson who worked especially hard on the TIFF Lightbox event and with the Host Committee this year. Deepest thanks to Leslie LeMond and her team, without whom we would have no meeting space, no hotel rooms, no wifi, no receptions, and no fun. And thanks to all of you for traveling to Toronto and sharing your work. Here’s to a week of great conversations. Your obedient servant, Pamela Robertson Wojcik President 3 Letter from Program Chair I am delighted to help welcome all of you to the 59th annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. When our organization, then called the Society of Cinematologists, convened its first two conferences in 1960, the total membership comprised 37 people. Today, nearly that many served on the Program Committee alone, evaluating more than 1,300 proposals of work to be shared here in Toronto. Even compared to our 2008 conference in Philadelphia, that figure represents more than a 150% uptick in the number of submissions we received. Overall conference attendance has surged by a similar ratio. These statistics tell so many stories about the tremendous expansion of SCMS, the intellectual diversity and vitality of our members, and the escalating challenges of managing such a grand event. In these pages, you’ll see many people recognized for essential contributions toward that effort. My own debts start with the Program Committee members who thoughtfully weighed every proposal that appears in this booklet and many others that don’t: Peter Alilunas, Tim Anderson, Miranda Banks, Grant Bollmer, Marta Boni, Chris Cagle, Catherine Clepper, Steven Cohan, Michael Curtin, Michael DeAngelis, Elizabeth Ellcessor, Grégoire Halbout, Rebecca Harrison, Kristen Hatch, Tanya Horeck, Eric Hoyt, Aleksandra Kaminska, Carly Kocurek, Derek Kompare, Michele Leigh, Cynthia Lucia, Alice Leppert, Alfred Martin, Paula J. Massood, Linda Mizejewski, Miriam Petty, Justin Rawlins, Amy Rust, Barbara Selznick, and Pamela Robertson Wojcik.