The Society for Animation Studies Newsletter ISSN: 1930-191X

Volume 30, Issue 2 Fall 2017

In this Issue: Letter from the Editors SAS Announcements

1 ● President’s Report Nichola Dobson Dear SAS members, 2 ● Membership Report Robert Musburger As 2017 draws to a close, it is time to reflect on a 3 ● Web Report Timo Linsenmier bumper year of animated events, symposia, 4 ● 2017 Emru Townsend Awards workshops and conferences that have made up an Tom Klein extremely rich animation calendar. No sooner had 5 ● Animation Studies 2.0 the dust settled on the SAS conference in Padova, Cristina Formenti Italy, plans were already afoot for Montreal 2018, hosted by Concordia University. This will, of course, Events and Announcements represent the 30 year anniversary of the Society for 6 ● Report: Ecstatic Truth II – Animation Studies – a wonderful achievement and Lessons of Darkness and Light worthy of hearty commemoration I think you’ll agree. Carla MacKinnon and Birgitta Hosea To keep things ticking over until Montreal, we have 7 ● Report: Queer/ing Animation our usual roster of regular updates on the society’s Claire Mead and Kodi Maier progress, including president’s report, membership 8 ● Report: The Persistence of Walt and web information, the results of the 2017 Emru Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Townsend Awards, and an insight into the growth of Dwarfs (1937) the SAS blog. As usual, we are very grateful to our Eve Benhamou contributors, on whom we can always count! 9 ● CFP: …Now, Then, Next: 30th Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference The latter half of this latest newsletter reflects on Upcoming Event exactly the diversity and scope of work being done with the field of animation studies. We have reports on the Ecstatic Truth II and Queer/ing Animation conferences held at the Royal College of Art and Membership Information University of Hull respectively. The issue then ● SAS Board and Contacts closes with a summary of this year’s Anifest symposium, this year with a Snow White theme, as well as a CFP reminder for the SAS conference.

Happy holidays one and all, and see you in Montreal for SAS 2018!

Sincerely, Christopher Holliday and Lilly Husbands

The articles in the SAS Newsletter are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Contributions are copyrighted by authors and remaining information is ©2006 Society for Animation Studies. Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v30n2, p.1

President’s Report

Nichola Dobson

Hello SAS members.

This year seems to have gone by particularly quickly and looking back over the messages and pictures, our summer conference in Padova, Italy seems like a distant memory! It was a fantastic conference and I was privileged to be part of such a well- organized event in such historic surroundings. Thanks again to Marco Bellano and his amazing team for bringing us together to meet and share our ideas and develop new plans for research in the future. I know of several research projects which have grown from initial conversations there. As always though, we also look forward to our next conference; moving west to the beautiful city of Montreal and our hosts Concordia University. The call for papers has gone out (see details in the newsletter) and the deadline is fast approaching (15th December) so get those proposals in. This past year is technically our 30th anniversary when founder, Harvey Deneroff thought it might be a good idea to get together with some people to talk about animation; next year is our 30th conference. There will be some celebrations in place so look out for that.

The website redevelopment was our biggest project last year and the new site continues to be updated with new content, some sections faster than others. If any members would like to contribute please let us know. We have recently relaunched our regular news updates, managed by Maggie Guo. She is doing a great job posting items frequently so please keep checking back in to keep up to date on all things animated.

We supported three more events this year with sponsorship; “Queering Animation”, and “Ecstatic Truth II”, which you can read about in the newsletter. We will be supporting new events next year so please keep an eye out for a call for funding support in early spring.

We currently have a few offers to host the conference in 2019, but you may be aware that we try to rotate as widely around the globe as possible, so we are not yet decided. If you are interested in hosting in 2019 or beyond then please contact me for a proposal form. Ideally, we would like to have the venues fixed a few years ahead to help members plan, but we understand that sometimes things change so it is good to have options.

Plenty to get on with before the year is out! Good luck with your conference proposals and keep in touch!

Best wishes

Nichola Dobson President, SAS

Membership Report

Robert Musburger

PRELIMINARY SAS FALL 2017 FINANCIAL REPORT

INCOME Wells Fargo Checking balance 6,566.70 Savings balance 25,546.10

Wells Fargo total 32,112.80 Pay Pal Pay Pal total 5,706.63

EXPENSES

Total expenses, so far 20217 11,099.19

SAS FALL 2010 MEMBERSHIP REPORT

Total 2017-18 paid members Total 2011 paid members (includes 2010 dues)

Renewal

Student

New

Total paid members 229

Web Report

Timo Linsenmaier

As every year, the AGM is both an opportunity to look back and evaluate how our websites have been doing as well as give an update on planned development work.

So, first of all, here are the numbers you’ve all been waiting for! In the period from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017, statistics for unique website visitors are:

 www.animationstudies.org o 7,862 unique visitors o 33,219 page views (2.73 pages/session) o Bounce rate: 52.72%

 journal.animationstudies.org o 15,503 unique visitors o 49,278 page views (2.12 pages/session) o Bounce Rate: 67.87%

 blog.animationstudies.org o 23,082 unique visitors o 47,066 page views (1.56 pages/session) o Bounce Rate: 78.67%

And the winner is… the blog – at least when it comes to raw numbers. However, when e.g. looking at the recently re-designed main website, there are some nuances: Even though less people come to visit overall, they stay longer, and navigate deeper into the site as on e.g. the blog.

This is also very visible when comparing stats for the previous year with the ones from this year, see the figures below.

In other words, the investment made into our web properties has clearly paid off, and given that apart from the conference, which not everybody can attend, the web is our main means of exchange, it is necessary to sustain this momentum.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the numbers is that content is king. The parts of the site that get updated more frequently with fresh content, i.e. the journal and the blog, are more attractive. The Board has therefore decided to look for a web editor, a content manager, who can update the main website with news and announcements on a regular basis, thus driving more interest and traffic to the site – making it a hub for information about animation studies! If you’re interested in helping in this role, please contact the president, Nichola Dobson!

Finally, there are other technical projects to be realized in the coming months. The first concerns payments. We have come to realize that Paypal is not available any more in a variety of countries, e.g. Singapore or Turkey. On the other hand, bank transfers need manual input into the database and therefore take longer. We’re looking at finding new solutions to this. Other payment providers seem to have similar restrictions as Paypal if they’re US-based (e.g. Stripe), some are only available regionally (e.g. GoCardless, only in Europe), or are complex to set up (e.g. Ogone, a classical online financial transaction provider). The task at hand is therefore to find, in the coming months, a mix of several providers that cover all geographical areas and that we will be able to integrate with our existing automatic subscription mechanisms, to hopefully get to even smoother dues and membership processing.

Another area that needs work are institutional memberships. While the new dues structure has resulted in a number of institutions making use of the possibility to register faculty as a group, the administrative procedures on our end still need work. Adding individual institutional members requires manual changes to the database at the moment, which, again, takes time. We will therefore work on a new module for the backend interface in the coming months to facilitate this process, and also integrate institutional memberships with the new payment mechanisms, which should also result in smoother dues and membership processing for this group of members.

Then there are a few smaller projects that the Board has been discussing for a while, and that we’ll hopefully also tackle soon: The Journal, which has just had its 10th anniversary, will need a visual refresh; the SAS turns 30, and we’ll look into if we can get a small module for the site that allows us to collect tributes and testimonials. The European subsite, which was hacked a few years ago, is nearly restored, and finally, we’re planning to open a members-only YouTube channel to host recorded conference sessions and other interesting lectures.

Quite the program for the coming months! As always, we’ll keep you updated via the mailing list and this newsletter, and if you have ideas, suggestions, or questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via [email protected]

2017 EMRU TOWNSEND AWARDS

Tom Klein

The Award and Outreach committee has completed its selection process for the 2017 Emru Townsend Awards, to provide financial assistance for travel to this year’s S.A.S. conference at the University of Padova, Italy.

There are six award recipients, three in the professional category and three in the student category. The professional recipients are: Nazli Eda Noyan (Associate Professor, University of Bahcesehir, Istanbul), Jana Klenhova (Independent scholar/DFG, Humboldt University, Berlin) and Terry Wragg (Leeds Animation Workshop). The student recipients are: Shaopeng Chen (University of Southampton), Jason Kennedy (Auckland University of Technology) and Iveta Karpathyova (University of Toronto).

The recipients were selected from among a diverse range of international applicants. The selection panel was administered by Tom Klein (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles) and was comprised of the following scholars and animators: Rachel Walls (Charles Sturt University, Sydney), Mihaela Mihailova (Yale University), Monireh Astani (Art University of Tehran), Marina Kerber (University of São Paulo) and Paritosh Singh (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur).

Each recipient will receive an award in the amount of 300€, named in memory of a dear friend of the S.A.S. and a longtime advocate who extended the breadth and reach of animation studies, Emru Townsend. Congratulations to Eda, Jana, Terry, Shaopeng, Jason, and Iveta.

Animation Studies 2.0

Cristina Formenti

The blog keeps gaining new readers throughout the world, firmly placing itself as SAS’ most read publication. Furthermore, in the last months the number of submissions to the blog has significantly risen. In particular, our recent “Women in Animation” theme, guest curated by Bella Honess Roe, has had an exceptional response both in terms of submissions and of views, to the point that, despite having originally been thought of as a one-month theme, it has ended up lasting two months. If the topics addressed in the work submitted for consideration to an academic publication can be considered an indicator of the areas towards which scholars are drawing an increasing attention, what

the blog’s submissions of the last year or so reveal is that today there is a growing interest in exploring and understanding the relationships existing between gender and animation.

Animation Studies 2.0 has now a new feature under trial. Indeed, as we had anticipated last July during the annual SAS general meeting, we have recently introduced the possibility to subscribe to the comments of a single post and receive them directly in your e-mail, so to allow you to closely follow the conversation around the posts you are interested in, even if you do not comment yourself. The introduction of this new feature is aimed at encouraging and easing the development of a conversation around the posts. Currently, however, it is not much used. In order to understand if it proves useful and if it is worth keeping it, I would therefore invite you to try it and let me and Nichola know what you think of it.

Also, do bear in mind that, aside from posts connected to its monthly themes, the blog also accepts for consideration on a rolling basis throughout the year posts illustrating the genesis of a recently completed animated work or examining it from a theoretical perspective as well as reviews of animation-related books, conferences and festivals. Furthermore, it is also possible to serve as a guest blogger and as a guest curator. So, do not hesitate to get in touch with me if you wish to write a report or a review for the blog, curate a month on a specific topic, or author a few posts for the blog on a same topic. Our aim is to offer new and diversified content each week, so as to have the blog grow always more and establish itself as a key site for discussion on animation-related ideas. Yet, in order to be able to do so, we need you to keep sending for consideration your work as well as reading, commenting, sharing and liking the blog’s posts!

If you have any comments, questions or topics to suggest please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Keep following the blog!

Cristina Formenti, co-editor of Animation Studies 2.0

Report: Ecstatic Truth II – Lessons of Darkness and Light

Carla MacKinnon and Birgitta Hosea

Royal College of Art, London Saturday 27th May 2017

The second Ecstatic Truth symposium was held at the Royal College of Art, London, on the 27th May 2017. It was co-organised by Dr Tereza Stehlíková and Dr Birgitta Hosea

in association with the RCA’s MA Documentary Animation pathway and was very well attended with over 120 delegate present. The day’s events were introduced by a welcome from the organisers and Professor Teal Triggs, Associate Dean of the School of Communication.

Keynote 1: Bella Honess Roe - ‘Medium Specificity and Deep Surfaces: Animated Documentary('s) Challenges’

The day kicked off with a keynote by Bella Honess Roe, who expanded on the idea of ‘absence and excess’ that she put forward in her monograph Animated Documentary. Using the examples of two short films – Abuelas and Irinka and Sandrink, which both deal exile and displacement – Honess Roe demonstrated that animation can be used both as metaphorical wish fulfilment and as an exploration of memory, both memories of events directly experienced and memories passed down through families and cultures. This was explored both in terms of the films’ approach to subject matter and also their approach to form – in which an element of indexicality is is filled with the excess of animation. Honess Roe spoke about how animation studies academics strive to pin down animation in theoretical terms, but find that definitive conclusions are elusive. She suggested that this is due to the vastness of animation as a discipline and the range of animation techniques available: “Very few animated documentaries look alike”. Perhaps this resistance to reductive conclusions is one of animation’s strengths.

Dr Bella Honess Roe is a film scholar who specialises in documentary and animation. Her 2013 monograph Animated Documentary is the first text to investigate the convergence of these two media forms and was the recipient of the Society for Animation Studies’ 2015 McLaren-Lambart award for best book. She also publishes on animation and documentary more broadly and is currently editing a book on Aardman Animations (I.B. Tauris), co-editing a volume on the voice in documentary (Bloomsbury) and co-editing the Animation Studies Handbook (Bloomsbury). She is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Film Studies at the University of Surrey. For more info on her work: https://bellahonessroe.wordpress.com

Rose Bond - ‘Traversing the terrain of space, time and form: Broadsided’

Must documentary be confined to a single screen? How does the siting of a screening influence its perception? This screening/talk focuses on documentary strategies in Rose Bond’s multi-screen animated installation Broadsided! which was sited in the windows of the Exeter Castle.

In her presentation, Rose Bond gave an insight into her research and production process when making large scale architectural animation projections such as Illuminations I, situated in the windows of a building in historic Portland's Chinatown; Gates of Light, at Eldridge Street Synagogue, New York; and Broadsided, at Exeter Castle, a former Court House. Based on extensive historical research, her work interprets the histories of buildings into narratives and symbolic motifs that are then projected back onto the windows of the building itself. She provided an insight into the Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v29n2, p.8

documentary methods she uses in the development of her work: research, re- enactment, data visualization and parataxis. Her storyboarding process was particularly interesting to see, as she boarded the different narratives that played out across the different windows – a more lateral process than traditional storyboarding. She referred to this “multiscreen” boarding as “a different kind of editing, composing”. The process of storyboarding was the moment of ‘parataxis’, the juxtaposing of individual visual and narrative elements across multiple windows to create new meaning for those elements. Bond explained that in her work it is important that the audience do not see all the material when they watch – they are required to chose which images to focus on throughout, so the experience is different with each viewing.

Rose Bond is an artist who creates monumental, content driven animated installations. Rear projected in multiple windows, her themes are often drawn from the site – existing as monuments to the unremembered. Her installations have illuminated urban spaces in Zagreb, Toronto, Exeter UK, New York City, Utrecht, Netherlands and Portland, Oregon. Broadsided! (Exeter, UK) from Rose Bond. To see more of her latest work: http://www.opb.org/television/programs/artbeat/segment/portland-oregon-animator-rose- bond/

Carla MacKinnon - ‘Immersion and alienation: animated virtual realities’

Next up, Carla MacKinnon presented a paper exploring how animated documentaries are pioneering creativity in virtual reality (VR) and proposed that the absence and excess (Honess Roe, 2013) of animated documentary is complemented by the dual qualities of immersion and alienation present in VR. This was supported by an analysis of two recent animated VR documentaries – Nonny de la Peña’s Out of Exile - in which the main character is confronted about his sexuality by his family in a religious intervention - and Michelle and Uri Kranot’s Nothing Happens - based on the circumstances of her Russian grandparents’ disappearance. In the viewing of both the body is both absent and present as the user is at once spectator, performer and witness of injustice.

Carla MacKinnon is a filmmaker and practice-based PhD candidate at Arts University Bournemouth, whose moving image work has been exhibited widely. Carla has a Masters in Animation from Royal College of Art and has worked as a festival producer and manager of technology projects. She is also director of interdisciplinary events organization Rich Pickings.

Vincenzo Maselli – ‘Deeper strata of meanings in stop-motion animation: the meta- diegetic performance of matter’

Can puppets’ skin materials express deeper levels of signification in stop-motion animation cinema? Vincenzo Maselli’s presentation explored ideas of performance and materiality of stop-motion, referencing the work of Marks, Sobchack and Barker in an analysis of the relationship between the human body and the texture of filmed material. Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v29n2, p.9

He considered the concept of autonomous performance of matter in stop-motion animation and that matter can express a sense of tactility and metaphorically act autonomously from the diegetic narrative, staging a second level of narrative (meta- diegetic).

Vincenzo Maselli is a PhD student in design at Sapienza University of Rome. His research aims to demonstrate how materials and puppets’ building techniques can communicate narrative meanings in stop motion animation cinema. In October 2016 he moved in London, where he is continuing his research at Middlesex University.

Sally Pearce – ‘Can I draw my own memory? A visual essay’ Sally Pearce’s paper focused on her work tracking memory and the problems presented by making an animated documentary about this. Remembering is a shuttling back between experience in movement and experience in memory. How can sensual memory be drawn? How much of memory is sensual and how much visual? She showed a piece of work in which an animated horse wanders through bleak live action landscapes that represent her fractured memories from a time of serious illness. This record of illness is, she explains, “straight from the horse’s mouth”. She discussed her process of trying to capture and visualise memory, and the frustrations that come with this: “I try to use my pencil as a scalpel to extract a memory whole, but the memory will not be drawn out like a lump of tissue, instead it changes as soon as the pencil touches it. As my memory changes under the pencil, I am changed, I redraw myself.” Pearce particularly noted that her drawings can feel trapped in the language we commonly use about memory and illness and bound up in accepted metaphor, frustrated that “my drawing mind remains locked into the forms of the spoken and written word”.

Sally Pearce studied philosophy at Cambridge, then became a nurse. She started making films while studying Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam, followed by an MA in Animation Direction at the NFTS. Her films have screened and been awarded at Festivals around the world. She hopes to start her PhD in October 2017.

Barnaby Dicker – ‘A Quivering Terminus: Walerian Borowczyk’s Games of Angels, animated documentary and the social fantastic.’

Barnaby Dicker’s paper analyses how Borowczyk uses ‘fantastic topography’ to play with tropes of both documentary and fiction, in order to engage with painful social history in a direct, but far from literal way. Dicker’s analysis of Borowczyk’s disturbing and powerful short looked at how both imagery and structure worked to create meaning for the audience. He commented on the clues the filmmaker’s uses to guide the audience, such as the inclusion of a title card providing assurance that characters and events portrayed in the film are not intended to resemble characters living and dead. Dicker noted that the film is highly abstract and would not in any way invite an assumption that it was portraying real characters – so in fact the title card may be working inversely, to suggest to an audience that what they are watching does, in fact, reflect reality. Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v29n2, p.10

Dr Barnaby Dicker teaches at Cardiff School of Art and Design. His research revolves around conceptual and material innovations in and through graphic technologies and arts.

Keynote 2: Lei Lei

The afternoon sessions began with a talk from Chinese artist Lei Lei who offered a lively tour of the process behind his compelling and visually stunning artwork. In his experimental animated works, LeiLei uses found materials – discarded photographs - and processes of enhancing and degrading images to interrogate history, memory and culture. In his work, he always pays particular attention to collecting and collating historical texts and images and trying to search for elements of the poetic and dramatic between reality and fiction. In Hand colored No.2, through the use of manual painting, Lei Lei and Thomas Sauvin try to connect black and white images of different people, attempting to construct a fictional character, narrating his personal history.

LeiLei 雷磊, Artist / Filmmaker. Born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, 1985 and is an experimental animation artist with his hands on video arts, painting, installation, music and VJ performance also. In 2009 he got a master’s degree in animation from Tsinghua University. In 2010, his film This is LOVE was shown at Ottawa International Animation Festival and awarded the 2010 Best Narrative Short. In 2013 his film Recycled was selected by Annecy festival and was the Winner Grand Prix shorts – non-narrative at Holland International Animation Film Festival. In 2014 he was on the Jury of Zagreb / Holland International Animation Film Festival and he was the winner of 2014 Asian cultural council grant.

Guli Silberstein - ‘The Schizophrenic State Project’ Guli Silberstein’s presentation of his work The Schizophrenic State Project, gave an insight into the personal context which led him to appropriate and adapt media footage of violence to specifically explore conflict in Israel, Palestine and the region. The Schizophrenic State Project, which started in 2000, draws from archival mass media footage of violence, war, and protest. The images are processed via digital means in diverse ways, creating poetic works that formulate news media critique. The presentation offered an intimate view of an artist striving to find a voice to communicate his complex relationship with a disturbing subject matter which is both deeply personal and boldly political. In processing and re-presenting footage of war and protest Silberstein recontextualises it, challenging a viewer to watch and consider it in a new way.

Guli Silberstein is an artist and video editor, based in London UK since 2010, born in Israel (1969). In 2000 he received his MA in Media Studies from The New School NYC, and since 2001, he creates work shown and winning awards in festivals and art venues in the UK and worldwide.

Becky James – ‘Expanding the Index in Animated Documentary’

Becky James’ paper considered the subgenre of documentary animation about mental states. Often these works try to recreate an unusual psychological state to promote empathy and understanding. Using patient records and contemporaneous film strips, Betina Kuntzsch’s 2016 animation Spirit Away avoids speaking for, explaining, or diagnosing the female patients at the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic. Kuntzsch does not use the index to provide truth claim or to promote understanding, but instead the index acts as metaphor and distancing mechanism in this work about isolation. Through a close reading of Betina Kuntzsch’s Spirit Away, James explores the intersection of the individual and social through animation. She also offered insights into the culture around animated documentary production in comparison to the fine art industry where she previously worked, suggesting that there is an absence of critique and serious professional support for emerging filmmakers through canonical institutions in the field of experimental animation.

Becky James has exhibited in galleries throughout the US and at film festivals including SXSW, Jihlava Documentary Festival, Filmfest Oldenburg, and IFF Rotterdam. A native New Yorker, James graduated from Harvard and received her MFA from Bard. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design.

Susan Young – ‘Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma’

Susan Young’s presentation “Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma” showcased her PhD research on psychological trauma, in which she reflects on her own experience. Through her autoethnographic animation methodologies (which includes herself as an experimental case study), her work aims to excavate and bear witness to the memories and lived experience of psychological trauma, and to challenge their related, often stigmatising and ‘othering’, psychiatric diagnoses. Young showed her visceral short film The Betrayal and discussed her process, sharing the ways in which she managed the risks associated with conducting any research on trauma.

Susan Young is an animation director who has worked principally in advertising, commissioned films and music promos. Her current RCA PhD research is based on personal experience of psychological trauma, and includes a series of short experimental films that explore how animation might ameliorate trauma symptoms.

Screenings

The presentations were followed with a series of screenings: Lei Lei, Recycled (6 min) Sheila Sofian, Truth has Fallen (15 min excerpt) Peter Bo Ruppmund, Tectonics (20 min excerpt) Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v29n2, p.12

Closing Discussion

The 2016 Ecstatic Truth symposium had concluded with a sense of agreement that the arguments around the legitimacy of animation as a documentary form which have dominated much of animated documentary scholarship have reached the limits of their usefulness, and that we can progress better if we start from a working assumption that animated documentary can exist as a valid form. The 2017 event followed on from this, taking a broad perspective on animated documentary that allowed for an open, discursive atmosphere in which diverse ideas could be raised, considered and challenged. There were no definitive answers but, as Honess Roe suggested at the beginning of the day, maybe animation’s ability to elude the finality of concrete definition is at the heart of its charm. Finally, thanks were given to the Society for Animation Studies for supporting the day’s events.

For more information about studying MA Animation: Documentary at RCA: http://www.rca.ac.uk/schools/school-of-communication/animation/documentaryanimation-pathway.

Video documentation of this event will be archived on the RCA’s Documentary Animation Vimeo channel at: https://vimeo.com/channels/documentaryanimation.

Report: Queer/ing Animation

Claire Mead and Kodi Maier

University of Hull Wednesday 26th July 2017

Animation's ability to make visible a multiplicity of experiences, narratives and identities reveals all of its potential when it comes to increased LGBTQI representation in the media. Yet, it is the paradoxical absence of queer theory within animation studies that prompted PhD student Kodi Maier to launch "Queer/ing Animation". An intensive day of research, discussion and questioning showed such a symposium—combining a wide range of history, media and gender studies as well as animation practices—was long overdue.

Dr Nichola Dobson crystallized the importance of queer re-interpretation within animation history in her keynote speech on Normal McLaren's practice and its coded ties to his gay identity. Her exploration of McLaren’s correspondence, referring to his 50-year relationship with Guy Glover, was presented alongside an analysis of the Society for Animation Studies © 2014 SAS Newsletter, v29n2, p.13

homoerotic imagery that has been present in his films since the 1930s. Dr Dobson’s talk launched a larger discussion around the difficulties in attributing queer sensitivities to abstract or experimental works, which then extended to visual art history: how can we define queer animated experiences and identities beyond purely figurative terms?

The "Queer People Queer Texts" panel further explored this ambiguity. First presenter Paul Wells' investigation of Paul Lynde's caustic outsider persona as a queer closeted actor focused on Lynde’s voicing of three Hanna Barbera characters. According to Wells, Lynde’s ad-libbing and inflexions as the villain from "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop" added a layer of gay subtext to the sexual innuendo of the show for adult viewers "in the know". Elsa Padilla then delivered a strong analysis of the 1990’s Emmy award-winning Simpsons episode, "Homer's Phobia," in which John Waters' cameo, as a character guiding Homer in overcoming his "gay panic", relates his kitsch and camp underground aesthetic to visual cues within a mainstream show.

In the next panel, "Queer Activism", animator Kate Jessop showed the power of animation as a form of activism with her project, in collaboration with UK-wide experimental animators, "Queer Heroes", as well as her own sitcom “Tales from Pussy Willow,” which uses humour to tackle sexist and homophobic micro-aggressions. The conversation around fandoms' claiming of a show and its queer representation (or lack thereof), launched by “Homer’s Phobia”, was reignited by Oli Lipsky's insightful paper, “Re-Queering Anime: Reclaiming a ‘Retroactive Pride’ in the Active Fandom of the Sailor Moon Franchise”, which discussed the re-queering of the Sailor Moon franchise via its online fanbase. The English dub's erasure of the anime's queer and gender non- conforming characters was countered by a strong cyberqueer community able to ensure the continued legacy of the anime and its LGBTQI representation. ChunNing 'Maggie' Guo (RenMin University of China) was able to Skype in to the panel, subtly relating second-wave feminist queer discourse to the practices of women in digital art in the 70s and 80s with her paper, “The Chorus of ‘The Second Wave’: An Examination of Pre- Queer ‘Manifesto’ of Digital Art”.

The next panel, "Queering Animation", started with Claire Mead exploring the fluid, DIY nature of experimental animation as a way to subvert conventional expectations of gender presentation and sexuality. This included segment on deviations from a model in animated TV shows such as Steven Universe. Disney animation made its first appearance of the day as Jack Tieszen navigated the early queer coding of the Golden Age of animation through characters such as Ferdinand the Bull. Tieszen’s documentation of Warner Brothers' use of drag in Looney Tunes, revealing 35 instances of gender transgression, provided the perfect transition for the exploration of gender performance and non-conforming identities in “Bob's Burgers” by Katie Barnett. Louise's identification as "non-human" and Gene's fluid gender performance, which often relies on early animation drag comedy, led to fascinating group discussions about the thin line between homophobic “caricature” and representation. Non-binary visibility was also mentioned, after a criticism that gender was still being used as a restrictive way to view these often non-human, gender-ambiguous personas. This led to remarks upon the positive presence of the character "B-MO", from Adventure Time, as well as the nature of the gems as genderless but feminine-presenting and queer-coded in Steven Universe.

The "Animation and Queer Theory" panel included Thomas Evans, who highlighted the ways the show Archer wittily deconstructs toxic notions of heteronormative masculinity associated with the James Bond spy archetype. Beatrice Frasl gave additional insight on queer coding in Disney, focusing on its diverse female villains, to whom she applied Barbara Creed's concept of the “monstrous feminine”. The sexually aggressive Ursula, modelled off the drag queen Divine, was sharply contrasted with Snow White's Evil Queen, herself modelled off Dracula's daughter and lesbian visual archetypes.

The symposium ended with Daniela Del Castello's paper over Skype, in which she presented her painted glass animation technique. Throughout the paper Del Castello discussed how she used her own artistic process to explore notions of fantasy, identity and the formation of desire.

From the onset, the symposium shone through its diversity of presenters and subjects, which ranged from researchers hailing from a wide variety of disciplines to a rainbow of queer animators and their perspectives. The greatest delight of the day was the range of analyses of TV animation in reference to experimental practices and Golden Age animation. The symposium showed that we are at the very beginning of a rich and complex dialogue around queering animation, which can only grow and continue thrive from here. Until next time...

- Claire Mead

I must thank Claire for such an excellent overview of the symposium. Looking back on the day, I am happy to report that “Queer/ing Animation” was a success: the discussions were lively, the papers were engaging, and the events flowed together smoothly.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I had wanted to organize a conference for quite some time. While a number of queer scholars have discussed animation – e.g. Jack Halberstam (Queer Art of Failure) and Sean Griffin (Tinker Belles and Evil Queens) – and animation scholars have discussed concepts of queerness and queer identity in animation – e.g. Nichola Dobson and Paul Wells – there has never been a singular space where the intersection of queerness, queer identity, and animation is thoroughly investigated, no one animation text where new LGBTQIA+ scholars can open to find out where they belong in animation. It was my desire to establish that space and, thus, organize “Queer/ing Animation”.

The guidance I received from Dr Amy Davis, Dr Iris Kleinecke-Bates, and Dr Nichola Dobson was invaluable. They helped me organize who I needed to contact to coordinate catering, registration, finances, and so much more. I believe I accomplished this aim fairly well, although navigating the finer points of campus bureaucracy was difficult. Given that the university was recently reorganized, I struggled to figure out who I needed to contact to handle specific aspects of the conference, even with the guidance Amy, Iris, and Nichola. Tracking down the proper contact in the finance department was particularly difficult. As I learned later, I was meant to contact them first

to acquire the conference cost codes that would set the rest of the planning in motion. Instead, I contacted the finance department last and, as a result, was left to manage most of the conference finances myself. While, in the end, this was not an enormous setback, the finance department for the university informed me that situation was far from ideal. In future, I plan to track down the necessary financial details first to avoid such a situation.

The funding I received from the Society of Animation Studies was an enormous help. I was able to use the money to pay for Nichola’s travel and accommodation, to commission an original logo for the symposium, and to have the logo made into pin badges for attendees. Because the SAS funding covered the majority of the conference expenses, I was able to keep the registration fees relatively low - £20 for students and independent researchers, and £25 for lecturers – and thus accessible, without sacrificing on quality. It was important to me that I provide good food that catered to everyone’s dietary needs as well as plenty of coffee, tea, and water to keep everyone running throughout the day. Thanks to the SAS grant, I was able to accomplish this task to everyone’s satisfaction. Most importantly, I was able to set up a small bursary for presenters to cover their registration fees. While engagement during panels is important, it is in the conversations over coffee, tea, and lunch that everyone relaxes and fertile ground is laid for new ideas to develop. For this reason, it was important that presenters and attendees would be able to discuss their ideas and comments with each other between breaks. Many early-career presenters expressed their thanks for the bursary as they would not have been able to be physically present for the conference otherwise. That delegates such as Daniela Del Castillo were not able to physically attend the day due to prohibitive travel expenses was a shame – their energy and insight were certainly missed in the numerous discussions throughout the day. Many early-career presenters expressed their thanks for the bursary as they would not have been able to be physically present for the conference otherwise.

Overall I am pleased with the success of “Queer/ing Animation”. From the quality of the papers to the lively discussions between panels, I am proud of the work that everyone contributed. I hope that this symposium is not a contained, singular event but, instead, a seed for greater projects in the future.

- Kodi Maier

Report: The Persistence of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Eve Benamou

Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury Friday 29th September 2017

This year’s Canterbury Anifest, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, opened with a symposium coinciding with another major animated anniversary: the release of Disney’s first feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937). Entitled “The Persistence of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, this interdisciplinary symposium, co-organized by Dr Christopher Holliday and Bryan Hawkins, explored the enduring qualities that have marked the animated legacy of the film.

Dr Amy M. Davis (University of Hull) delivered a thought-provoking keynote, interrogating the specificity of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a quintessentially “Disney” film. She particularly emphasized the combination of modernity and nostalgia that characterizes its aesthetic and storytelling style. This duality between technological achievement and traditional feel also permeated through Disney’s advertising and merchandising discourses. Davis’ keynote led to a lively discussion, interrogating the very meaning of “Disney” for contemporary audiences.

Panel 1 focused on the adaptation and reception of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in a particular national context: France. Greg Philip (alostfilm.com) presented a paper on the first made-in-Hollywood French version of Snow White. Relying on this specific case study, his paper revealed the extent of Disney’s attention to detail and control over its animated output, as well as the historical, artistic, and technical significance of Disney’s early adaptations for foreign releases. Dr Sébastien Roffat (Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 – IRCAV) focused on the divided French reception of Disney’s Snow White, focusing especially on how the photographic “realism” of the film was received. Building on a wide range of archival material, Roffat explored the growing gap between mass audiences and intellectuals regarding Disney, arguably initiated in France and still present – to some extent – today.

Panel 2 examined in further details the aesthetic of Disney’s Snow White through aspects of design, style, and character. Ian Friend (University of Gloucestershire) discussed the legacy of Snow White’s rotoscoping process within contemporary animation industry, and in particular within current action analysis techniques. Dr Stéphane Collignon (Haute Ecole Albert Jacquard) focused on the particular design of Snow White, arguing that it has defined the stereotypical female character look of the Disney “princess” 80 years on. Exploring the problematic depiction of female beauty within animation, between credibility and caricature, he convincingly argued that any attempt at re-imagining the Disney “princess” would require a complete change in our understanding of what female characters could/should look like. Maarit Kalmakurki (Aalto University) examined components of Snow White’s costume design, which played a key role in imposing an iconic visual image for Disney’s character. Her paper underlined that, although often overlooked in existing literature, costume design was and remains integral to character creation and storytelling in animated films.

The last panel considered two other key aspects of Disney’s Snow White: merchandising and music/sound design. Mx. Kodi Maier (University of Hull) approached Snow White as a case study for Disney’s merchandising practices, pointing out that the pioneering introduction of pre-release merchandising greatly contributed to the success

of the film. Their paper also examined the increasingly gendered nature of the film’s merchandise, especially since the 2000s and the creation of the Disney Princess franchise. Dr Christopher Holliday (King’s College London) analyzed the film within the context of emerging film sound technology, and more particularly sound design in animation. Placing the film against Noel Carroll’s category of “silent sound film,” his paper also considered Snow White’s soundscape in relation to the hybrid form of the film in-between silent era aesthetics and spoken word. Sadeen Elyas’ paper explored Snow White’s contribution to the musical genre, arguing that the key narrative role of the songs makes the film one of the first integrated musicals.

Memorable music, iconic designs, ground-breaking techniques, global reach, enormous success, omnipresent merchandise, and seeds of criticisms. All these elements were sparked by, and have characterized, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and were eloquently discussed by all speakers. Their papers not only have demonstrated the multifaceted persistence of Snow White, but also have helped us understand the persistence of the Disney studio itself. Or, to borrow Amy Davis’ words, “what makes Disney Disney.”

CFP: Then, Now Next: 30th Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference

Upcoming Event

Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Tuesday 19th–Thursday 21st June 2018

Emerging Researchers Seminars & Workshops: Monday 18th June 2018 Post-conference field trip: Friday 22nd June 2018 ABSTRACT DEADLINE: Friday 15th December 2017

This occasion of the 30th Annual International Society for Animation Studies Conference prompts us to (re)consider the past present and future of animation and animation scholarship. Then | Now | Next is an invitation for reflection, prognostication, and critical reflection. It is an opportunity both to think about the state of union of animation production and animation studies, and a chance to suggest new directions for the next 30 years.

In popular understanding the past often seems settled, and the future itself has becomes predictable. How might animation practice and historical scholarship unsettle the past, interrogate the present, and reorient the future?

Animation has always been a critical component of rethinking the stability of the moving image and the recorded sound and their associated politics. This conference seeks interrogations into the temporalities of animation, the past/present/future of animation practices, the spatial locations and media conditions of its creation and study, and the orientations of this discipline of animation theory and practice. How can we re-infect our discipline with new narratives about the present, for the present, and into the future? How can these narratives reverberate outside animation studies, into the social, cultural, technological and political spheres?

SAS@30: Then | Now | Next Montreal and Concordia University have historical ties to animation and animation scholarship. We want to hear about your research, and encourage applicants to present their investigations of less charted areas, including:

 animation temporalities  histories and genealogies of animation or animation studies;  geographies of animation  colonialism & cultural appropriation  afrofuturism and animation  indigenous animation  neurodiverse animation  community, care & activism  animated sound  animation and futurity  animation and indie game design  animation’s media ecologies  animation and sustainability  animation and media industries  plasmaticity and (the future of) special effects

Please send all applications in text format (eg Word) to [email protected]. All applications should be accompanied by a 100-word bio with a second anonymized version of abstracts and keywords to facilitate blind review. Here are the recommended specifications for proposals:  6 mins microtalks: 150-word abstracts  20 mins conference papers and/or applications for the emerging researcher seminars* (please specify): 350-word abstracts + 3-5 keywords  90 mins pre-constituted panels: 150-word panel abstracts + bios and 350-word paper abstracts/participant  screenings/workshops/exhibitions: Proposals should be maximum 1 page with project descriptions and links to support material. Please indicate the duration of the event, the number of participants expected, and its requirements, including the facility (projection room, computer lab, studio with sinks, etc.), equipment, software, materials and the number of assistants (and skills) needed. We welcome applications for curated screenings, but request that accepted

proposers secure exhibition rights from filmmakers or distributors. We may be able to offer small artist fees, but cannot cover travel and accommodation costs.

Letters of Acceptance  All letters of acceptance will be sent out by mid-March to facilitate applications for funding and travel visas. (Non-presenting participants who require travel visas should contact organizers by email as soon as possible, so we can write letters of invitation).

Emerging Researchers Seminar (Monday 18th June)  Pre-circulated papers will be discussed in small seminar-style sessions mentored by established scholars. Participants must submit papers (10-15 pages in length) by June 1 for re-distribution and advanced reading by workshop mentors and other participants. We encourage applications from students at all levels (including your best undergraduates!), as well as recent graduates, new faculty members and independent researchers. Please indicate your affiliation and position. Participants may apply to present during the regular conference (June 19-21) with the same abstract, but please indicate if you have a preference. We will try to organize seminars according to topics and hope to offer financial assistance to some participants. Fees for Monday activities will be included in conference registration fees.

Contact  sas2018.hybrid.concordia.ca  [email protected]

Society for Animation Studies Board and Contact Information

Founded by Dr. Harvey Deneroff in 1987, SAS Membership the Society for Animation Studies (SAS) is Benefits to members include: an international organization dedicated to  Annual conferences. the study of animation history and theory.  Publication of peer-reviewed

SAS Board: conference proceedings in the Society's online journal, Animation Studies. Nichola Dobson, President University of Edinburgh, UK  Listing in the 'SAS Animation Experts' Chris Pallant, Vice-President directory (forthcoming). Canterbury Christ Church University, UK  The SAS Newsletter, an internal news Vacant, Secretary publication. Robert Musburger, Treasurer  Members-only discussion list. Musburger Media Services, USA Discounts to festivals and other events Pamela Turner, Chair with participating organizations. Virginia Commonwealth University, USA Regular Membership: Officers: USD 35.00 / 35.00 Euro Charles daCosta, Historian Student Membership Swinburne University of Technology, AUS USD 20.00 / 20.00 Euro Tom Klein, Institutional Membership Awards and Outreach Committee Chair USD 60.00 / 60.00 Euro Loyola Marymount University, USA Timo Linsenmaier, Webmaster Please visit the SAS website to learn how University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, to become a member.

GER Tim Jones, Website Development University of East Anglia, UK SAS Newsletter Submissions, suggestions, corrections, Publications Editors: address changes and all other Newsletter- Amy Ratelle, Journal Editor related correspondence should be Ryerson University, CAN addressed to: Christopher Holliday, Newsletter Editor King’s College London, UK Christopher Holliday Lilly Husbands, Newsletter Editor E: [email protected] Royal College of Art, UK Lilly Husbands SAS Websites: E: [email protected] http://www.animationstudies.org http://www.sas-in-europe.com SAS Newsletter subscriptions are free with http://universe.animationstudies.org/ membership in the society. Twitter: @anistudies Temporary SAS discussion group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/animationst udies/