SCMS 2019 Conference Program
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CELEBRATING SIXTY YEARS SCMS 1959-2019 SCMSCONFERENCE 2019PROGRAM Sheraton Grand Seattle MARCH 13–17 Letter from the President Dear 2019 Conference Attendees, This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Formed in 1959, the first national meeting of what was then called the Society of Cinematologists was held at the New York University Faculty Club in April 1960. The two-day national meeting consisted of a business meeting where they discussed their hope to have a journal; a panel on sources, with a discussion of “off-beat films” and the problem of renters returning mutilated copies of Battleship Potemkin; and a luncheon, including Erwin Panofsky, Parker Tyler, Dwight MacDonald and Siegfried Kracauer among the 29 people present. What a start! The Society has grown tremendously since that first meeting. We changed our name to the Society for Cinema Studies in 1969, and then added Media to become SCMS in 2002. From 29 people at the first meeting, we now have approximately 3000 members in 38 nations. The conference has 423 panels, roundtables and workshops and 23 seminars across five-days. In 1960, total expenses for the society were listed as $71.32. Now, they are over $800,000 annually. And our journal, first established in 1961, then renamed Cinema Journal in 1966, was renamed again in October 2018 to become JCMS: The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. This conference shows the range and breadth of what is now considered “cinematology,” with panels and awards on diverse topics that encompass game studies, podcasts, animation, reality TV, sports media, contemporary film, and early cinema; and approaches that include affect studies, eco-criticism, archival research, critical race studies, and queer theory, among others. No matter its expansion, the current society still shows what the initial mission statement defined as a “devotion to the medium as craft and art” and “a fellowship in spirit, in mind, and in performance.” One way we celebrate the history of our field and our society is through our Distinguished Career Achievement Award. This year, we give it to Donald Crafton whose work on early cinema, animation, performance, and sound embodies the society’s devotion to various media as craft and art. I hope you will join us at the Awards Ceremony on Friday at 5:00 PM and at the reception following to celebrate Professor Crafton and our other award winners, and to share in the fellowship of this venerable society. Have a great conference, Pamela Robertson Wojcik President 3 Letter from Program Chair Welcome to the 60th annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. I am honored to be this year’s Program Chair for what I hope will be an intellectually rewarding and socially satisfying experience in the beautiful city of Seattle. This fall we received 1200 proposals for pre-constituted panels, seminars, roundtables, workshops, and open call papers from a wide variety of independent scholars, graduate students, and faculty of all ranks. I am indebted to this year’s Program Committee, who carefully read every proposal and, in some cases, formed many of the open call panels that grace this program. Thank you to Peter Alilunas, Miranda Banks, Andrew Bottomley, Steven Cohan, Robin Curtis, Lindsey Decker, Cary Elza, Elizabeth Evans, Mark Gallagher, Rebecca Gordon, F. Hollis Griffin, Claire Henry, Daniel Herbert, Laura Horak, Sarah Keller, Bill Kirkpatrick, Melanie Kohnen, Derek Kompare, Dimitrios Latsis, Juan Llamas Rodriguez, Neepa Majumdar, Jeffrey Middents, Lori Morimoto, Miriam Petty, Isabel Pinedo, Kevin Sanson, Mel Stanfill, Neil Verma, and Pamela Robertson Wojcik. Each generously gave much of their time and expertise to ensure that the program reflects the diversity, currency, and depth of scholarship in which our membership is engaged. I also relied on the wisdom of previous Program Chairs, and would like to thank Steven Cohan, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, and Nick Davis for their input and help along the way. This was our second year using the submissions and review software designed by Open Water, and I’m grateful to their support team for their ongoing flexibility in designing and redesigning a portal to fit our needs. This year’s conference offers something for every specialty or interest and we’ve tried to organize the schedule, where possible, according to related research streams; for example, panels on animation are scheduled to follow each other in the same room on Thursday. Likewise, panels featuring Queer Theory and/or History are scheduled to follow each other Friday and Saturday. Other topics may have “mini” streams of similar design (following each other in the same room). We hope this enables attendees to take advantage of research interests without having to spend too much time mapping conference movements. Likewise, and building on last year’s success, we have continued scheduling seminars for Sunday mornings. We received a deep and diverse selection of seminar proposals this year, and we are pleased with the wide array of research and pedagogical interests represented. Please note one addition to the seminars: This year, conveners had the option of opening their seminars to the all conference attendees. If you have not already signed up for a seminar, you still have the opportunity to take advantage of this enriching chance to collaborate with peers in a more informal setting than offered elsewhere in the conference (open seminars are identified in the program). And, as per last year, seminars are followed by a coffee break leading into the last panels of the day. Beyond the panels, roundtables, workshops, and seminars, the conference also features a number of exciting special events organized by the Host Committee and other groups. The Seattle Host Committee has organized a fabulous event, “Evergreen Media: Film, Television, and New Media in Seattle,” for Thursday evening at 7:00 PM at the SIFF Egyptian Theatre. The evening will feature a panel of scholars, video clips, and short films highlighting the robust media culture located in Seattle. Thank you to our Host Committee— Kirsten Moana Thompson (Co-Chair), James Tweedie (Co-Chair), Lauren Berliner, Lyall Bush, David Coon, Dani Kissinger, Kathy Morrow, Leilani Nishime, Zaya Rustamova, and John Trafton—for organizing this event, and for putting together the Seattle guide found in your conference app. Other events of interest include “Reframing Ethnographic Media: Edward Curtis, Franz Boas, and the Kwakiutli First Nation,” “An Evening with Something Weird Video,” and a memorial to Frank Ukadike on Wednesday evening, and “The Secret Lives of Filmmakers: An Insider’s View of the Industry with Alan and Joyce Rudolph,” on Saturday evening, all in the conference hotel. This year we’ve also added a “pop-up” booth on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon in the hotel where members can “Ask a Librarian” or “Ask an Archivist” research questions. For those looking to go farther afield, SCMS is offering a hosted tour of the Paramount Theatre 4 on Thursday morning. Note as well that the Emerald City Comic Con coincides with our conference so there may be events of interest for SCMS members. Finally, if you’d like to honor and celebrate this year’s award recipients—and see old friends and colleagues—please join us at the Awards Ceremony and Reception starting with the awards at 5pm on Friday evening. One of the most enriching parts of being Program Chair is being exposed to both the depth and the breath of research interests pursued by our membership. From classical Hollywood to video games, spectatorship to cos-play studies, Film and Media Studies SCMS scholars bring a wealth of subjects to the conference. As this suggests, our membership has grown since we were first known as the Society for Cinematologists sixty years ago. Likewise, our membership has grown from under forty to more than 3,000 at this time. While this makes for a much larger conference than in the past, one of the virtues of such growth is that our meeting now includes scholars from all over the globe, including: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Chile, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paris, Poland, Qatar, Scotland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States. If you’re new to SCMS, welcome and we hope you find the annual conference to be a gratifying experience. To returning members, thank you for your continued support of the Society. I’d also like to extend a special welcome to independents scholars and those attendees affiliated with the various archives, film festivals, and other organizations. Your presence enriches all of our work. Finally, none of this—not the conference, not the awards, not the newsletters, not the social media and conference app—could be done without the herculean efforts of the SCMS staff housed either in the home office in Oklahoma or offsite. Communications Coordinator Margot Tievant keeps us apprised of all SCMS news throughout the year, and especially during conference time, while Erfana Enam, who recently joined the staff as our Financial Analyst, manages to keep our books in the black. While long-term conference scheduler Bruce Brasell left SCMS this year, we were fortunate that he left behind a strong legacy so that our new scheduler, Thomas J. West, could step in and help to create a program that combines diversity across panel sessions while also looking for places of contact and overlap. Website Content Manager Aviva Dove-Viebahn, who will be leaving this position later this year, has helped us all with our personal conference scheduling by managing our conference app, Crowd Compass, a much needed addition to the event.