SCMS 2016 CONFERENCE PROGRAM HILTON ATLANTA • ATLANTA, GEORGIA March 30–April 3, 2016 COVER PHOTO: 1940s view of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue including a sign for Bailey’s Royal Theatre and Big Bethel AME Church Courtesy of Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center Letter from the President Dear Friends and Colleagues, On behalf of the SCMS Board of Directors, the Host and Program Committees, and the Home Office staff, let me welcome everyone to Atlanta! Since the SCMS conference was last here twelve years ago, the Society has seen both membership and the conference itself increase dramatically in size. This year in Atlanta we have twice the number of panels as we had in 2004. Our growth confirms the vitality of cinema and media studies, as well as its continuing importance to the academy internationally and to our increasingly globalized societies. I know from previewing the program that it boasts an impressive display of the best, most stimulating work presently being done in our field, which is at once singular in its focus on visual and digital media and yet quite diverse in its scope, intellectual interests and goals, and methodologies. Given the dazzling assortment of panels on tap for the five days of our conference, I hope you will find this year’s selection as exciting and stimulating as in years past. And as dizzying, perhaps, as you try to decide where to go next. To assist you in navigating the program we have arranged for everyone to have access to the Grupio app. Among other features, it allows you to view the entire schedule and then to create your own calendars based on the sessions you want to attend. With this app you can also take notes during panels, interact with other attendees via social media, and navigate the hotel and the surrounding areas in downtown Atlanta through in-app maps. We hope you’ll check it out. While I know that you will find more information about the big evening events elsewhere in the program, I want simply to call your attention to them. The Host Committee has scheduled two special events reflecting Atlanta’s relatively new role as a hub of film and television production, as well as its historical importance for the civil rights movement. Both take place on Saturday evening at the Center for Civil and Human Rights. The Center itself is a terrific multi-media and interactive museum, and attendees are invited to visit the galleries on Saturday evening, too. Two other evening events are also worth adding to your busy schedule. On Wednesday, “Richard Dyer in the House of Cinema” celebrates the work and career of this esteemed scholar, who recently retired from King’s College London. Then on Thursday there is a timely multimedia panel, “Mediated Rights: The Transformative Power of Images from Selma to Ferguson.” Details for all these events are in the program. Additionally, I want to invite everyone who is new to SCMS to come to the Orientation for New Members/Networking Session on Thursday, which this year is being organized as a drop-in event from 11 am until 12:15 pm. Please stop by for some edibles and beverages and an opportunity to meet your officers and Board members, as well as representatives of the SIGs and caucuses. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to find out more about the work of the organization and to speak with representatives from groups that reflect your academic interests and that you may want to join. Other important SCMS events to put on your calendar take place on Friday. First up is the Members’ Business Meeting at 11 am, where you will learn about the Society’s activities this past year. Later in the day the Awards Ceremony starts at 4:15 pm. Here we will pay tribute to some of the best scholarship that appeared during the previous year. At the ceremony we will also honor and hear from the winner of this year’s Distinguished Career Achievement Award, Rick Altman. Following the ceremony, the official conference reception begins at 5:30 pm, where, over a drink and something to eat, you will have the opportunity not only to stand in line for those refreshments, but also to mingle with colleagues, catch up with old friends, make new acquaintances, and congratulate the award winners. Finally, a conference of this size is never possible without the help of many people, so I must single out and thank people whose names you will hear again during the conference, I am sure: Leslie LeMond, Conference Manager; Lindsey Pendleton, Home Office Administrative Coordinator; Debbie Rush, Account and Budget Representative; Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Web Content Manager; Brennick Gaudet, Program Assistant; and Bruce Brasell, Program Schedule Coordinator. We would all be lost without the insight and oversight of SCMS Executive Director, Jill Simpson. My gratitude also goes to Neepa Majumdar, who chaired the Program Committee, and to the many hardworking members who volunteered to serve with her this year. I thank Matthew Bernstein and Alessandra Raengo, and the Host Committee they co-chaired, for arranging the Saturday evening events. On a 2 day-to-day basis, my job as President would not be possible without the valuable assistance of Jill and the Home Office staff as well as the Board of Directors, who meet three times a year, and more often than that on email. Your officers—Past President Barbara Klinger, President-Elect Pamela Wojcik, Secretary Victoria Johnson, and Treasurer Amanda Ann Klein—are tireless in their dedication to the Society. But so are your elected representatives: Mary Beltrán, Nick Davis, Mary Desjardins, Kara Keeling, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, Neepa Majumdar, and Linda Mizejewski. Kara and Neepa will be cycling off at the end of this academic year, and I want to thank them now for their service. I also must not forget to mention my appreciation for the contributions of Will Brooker, Cinema Journal editor, and Caetlin Benson-Allott, representative of the Film/Media Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma (where the Home Office is located), who both serve on the Board in an ex-officio capacity. And in this vein, I want to extend personal thanks to Barb Klinger for steering the Society so well during the previous two years and for providing me with such an exceptional example of leadership that I now can only try to emulate. I am glad to be able to continue working with you, Barb, and to benefit from your sage advice. Much of the work that keeps SCMS running efficiently and beneficially for our discipline is done on a volunteer basis. There are too many members who serve on annual, standing, and ad-hoc committees for me to thank each by name. To each of you, please know that the Board and I appreciate your service. I know I am not speaking only for myself when I say that active involvement in the Society is rewarding on both a personal and professional level. Please consider volunteering to serve on one of your Society’s annual or standing committees. Enjoy the conference! Steven Cohan President, SCMS 3 Letter from the Program Chair On behalf of this year’s Program Committee, I want to welcome you all to the Atlanta conference. Once again, the conference is a snapshot of the state of our field today. This year, we decided to cluster panels on similar topics to constitute a series that you will find scheduled back-to-back in the same conference room. Such clusters will also give you a sense of some of the trends in this year’s conference: in revisiting auteurism, camera movement, and color, for example. Among workshops, there is a noticeable trend this year as well of taking stock of current and future research and teaching methods. I would like to thank the members of the Program Committee for volunteering to take on the hard work of reading proposals in September and October—one of the busiest times on the academic calendar. They worked very hard not only to read proposals, but also to form cohesive panels from open-call papers that are diverse enough to generate discussion. My thanks and appreciation go to Baerbel Goebel- Stolz, Mary Beltrán, Caetlin Benson-Allott, John Bruns, Alenda Chang, Glyn Davis, Nick Davis, Mary Desjardins, Mark Gallagher, Roger Hallas, Kristen Hatch, Christine Holmlund, Kara Keeling, Cynthia Lucia, Moya Luckett, Nicholas Marx, Linda Mizejewski, Alan Nadel, Rielle Navitski, Gary Needham, Joanna Rapf, Kevin Sanson, Mark Shiel, Shawn Shimpach, Victoria Sturtevant, and Pamela Wojcik. As in past years, we have events lined up for you each evening. We open on Wednesday evening with “Richard Dyer and the House of Cinema,” a special event honoring Dyer, whose groundbreaking scholarship continues to inspire and generate new work in star studies, queer theory, and sound studies. SCMS thanks the many sponsors of this event: King’s College London, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Palgrave/BFI Publishing, Routledge, Film Quarterly, Screen, and the SCMS African American and Queer Caucuses. Atlanta is a particularly exciting venue for us this year because of its rich connection to African American media and history. As in past years, Scholarly Interest Groups and Caucuses jointly organized a conference special event. On Thursday evening, the African American Caucus, the Caucus on Class, and the Documentary SIG have co-sponsored a timely discussion on “Mediated Rights: The Transformative Power of Images from Selma to Ferguson.” Please note, too, that caucuses and SIGs also sponsor regular panels and workshops, which are indicated in the conference schedule. I want to thank our Host Committee, co-chaired by Matthew Bernstein (Emory University) and Alessandra Raengo (Georgia State University) for securing the Center for Civil and Human Rights as the venue for their Saturday evening events.