THE WORLD'S LARGEST ORGANIZATION DEVOTED
TO
THE SCHOLARLY STUDY OF FILM AND MEDIA
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THE 2015-2016 MEMBERSHIP YEAR BEGAN ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2015.
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September 2015 - In This Issue:
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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S NOTE
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Fall marks new beginnings for all of you in the academic realm. The same can be said of the SCMS Home Office as we just began the new membership year.
With the award and proposal submission deadlines behind us, it is full steam ahead as we plan for the 2016 conference in Atlanta.
In this issue of News Brief, you will find information about the number of submissions received in the various award and proposal categories this year. You can also find out more about happens once your proposal is submitted. Finally, we are introducing a new section that will focus on each of SCMS's 2015 award winners.
As most of you know, since 1971, SCMS has honored the best in cinema and media scholarship, teaching and professional service. At the Montreal conference, awards were handed out in twelve categories.
Please read on to find the 2015 SCMS Award Winner Spotlight, which includes an informal Q&A with this month's featured winners, Heidi Rae Cooley and Oliver Gaycken. We warmly congratulate them on their accomplishment.
Best wishes for a productive fall semester!
- Jill Simpson
Executive Director
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SEPTEMBER 1
15-16 Membership Year Began
SEPTEMBER 18 (5 PM CT)
Deadline: Conference Event Proposals
OCTOBER 24
SCMS Professional Development Committee Webinar
MID-NOVEMBER
Accept and decline notices emailed
MID-DECEMBER
Preliminary program posted online
DECEMBER 21 (5 PM CT)
Deadline: Travel grant and waiver applications
JANUARY 22
Deadline: early bird hotel registration*
*Everyone who registers at the Hilton Atlanta before the early bird deadline will be entered in a drawing to win the cost of their entire stay at the conference (up to 5 nights) plus a $100 gift certificate to Trader Vic's restaurant (for up to 2 people).
MARCH 30 - APRIL 3
Atlanta 2016 Conference
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Please consider taking a few minutes in the coming week to participate in a survey crucial to the continued success of the Society's rich and diverse selection of Scholarly Interest Groups (SIGs). Designed by the SIG Coordinating Committee Co-chairs, Philippe Gauthier and Martin Johnson, in coordination with SIG liaisons to the Board of Directors, Mary Beltran and Kara Keeling, the goal of this survey is to obtain vital information from the SCMS membership about their involvement in and thoughts about scholarly interest groups within SCMS, particularly as the growth of SIGs has made SIG funding more of a challenge.
You can access the survey
here.
Thank you in advance for your participation. Please complete the survey by
5pm CT September 21, 2015.
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PLEASE UPDATE YOUR MEMBER PROFILE
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As of
July 31, 2015
, some profile fields have been cleared in order to facilitate the collection of the most up-to-date information from SCMS members. We apologize for any inconvenience (especially if you are a new member or renewed your membership and updated your profile recently); please update your affiliation from the new drop down menu as it is vital to our on-going membership research and double-check previously entered information in all the fields.
As SCMS grows, we hope to continue expanding our research initiatives, of which annually-updated profile information is an essential component.
Thank for your for your assistance.
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The SCMS records for awards given between 1974-1999 are incomplete. Please help us by reviewing the existing list. If you notice a missing award recipient, please contact the
SCMS Office. Thank you for your help.
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Executive Director
Administrative Coordinator
Account and Budget Representative
Program Assistant
Conference Manager
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OFFICERS
Steven Cohan, President 15-17
Pamela Wojcik, President-Elect 15-17
Victoria Johnson, Secretary 15-18
Amanda Ann Klein, Treasurer 14-17
BOARD MEMBERS
Kara Keeling,
13-16
Neepa Majumdar, 13-16
Mary Beltran,
14-17
Mary Desjardins,
14-17
Linda Mizejewski,
15-18
Nick Davis, 15-18
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, 15-17
NON-VOTING MEMBERS
Barbara Klinger, Past-President 15-17
Will Brooker, Cinema Journal Editor 12-16
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Web Content Mgr.
Caetlin Benson-Allott, Rep. of Home Office
Lindsey Pendleton, Admin.Coordinator
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Jill Simpson
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| MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT |
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Steven Cohan, President, SCMS
Photo Credit: Michael Kackman
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Most of you just began your fall term or will be starting it shortly, so I want to wish you all the very best at the start of a new academic year.
This month marks the start of a busy time for SCMS, too. The Program Committee is now hard at work reviewing conference proposals. Our new Administrative Coordinator, Lindsey Pendleton, has been moving into full conference-prep mode since she started in June, and by now nothing you may need to ask her will take her by surprise.
Early fall is also when the Board of Directors of SCMS meets for two days. This will be the first time I convene the meetings, but after serving as President-Elect, I already know these two days will be intense and exhausting yet crucial for the membership who elected us. Board members and officers work tirelessly in preparation for and subsequent to the meetings that occur in the fall and late spring, so a lot of Society business occurs throughout the year on email, Skype, or conference calls. Additionally, Board members serve as liaisons to all the standing committees, award committees, caucuses, and SIGs, and some of these groups will be submitting reports, proposals, and various other initiatives that need approval. We will discuss the Society's annual budget and decide on new expenses that need the Board's authorization. Planning events for the upcoming conference in Atlanta with the co-chairs of the Host Committee, the Program Chair and our Conference Manager will, of course, be a major item on the agenda, too. The editor of
Cinema Journal will give a financial and editorial report; we will hear about the journal's collaboration with
Aca-Media and other digital venues; and we will talk with our Web Manager about our web pages and related Internet projects like
Fieldnotes. We pack a lot of SCMS business into these two days! In my two-year term as President-Elect, I was impressed by the substantive discussions of very serious issues affecting the Society and the membership at large, the careful deliberation with which motions were crafted and voted upon--and the amount of coffee and cookies we all needed by the end of each afternoon. The meeting in October will be no exception, I am sure.
Have a great year everybody! And I hope you all will be coming to Atlanta 16!
Steven Cohan
President, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
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YOU SUBMITTED A PROPOSAL.
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NOW WHAT?
As Neepa Majumdar, the 2016 Program Committee Chair, and her intrepid team of readers begin the arduous task of reviewing over 1200 proposals, we want to shed some light on the evaluation process.
Step 1: Evaluation of Proposals
Once the submission deadline has passed, proposals are clustered according to category (workshop, pre-constituted panels, open call papers) and the open-call papers are then grouped according to their topics. Prior to the submission deadline, the Board of Directors appointed a Program Committee committee comprising pairs of readers for the various categories of proposals. The Program Committee Chair now distributes the groups of proposals to the reading pairs for their independent evaluations. Proposals are then scored, and the readers send their averaged scores to the Program Chair. Open-call readers also suggest how accepted papers may fit together into panels
Step 2: Panel and Workshop Capacity is Determined
While the readers are hard at work, the SCMS office staff creates a conference grid of all the dates/times/sessions. The grid reflects the total number of panels and workshops that can be accommodated at the conference. Once the total number of panels and workshops is determined, this information is communicated to the Program Committee Chair.
Step 3: Proposals are Accepted or Declined
As soon as the Program Committee Chair has finalized the proposal decisions, the SCMS Office notifies participants whether their submission was accepted or declined. These notifications are sent in Mid-November.
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Deliberations on all the awards are underway. Thank you for all the sterling nominations! Be sure to attend the Award
Ceremony
in Atlanta!
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Fieldnotes i
s an SCMS project to conduct, circulate and archive interviews with pioneers of film and media studies. In addition to recognizing the contributions of key scholars, the project also aims to foster knowledge of and interest in the diverse and dynamic developments that have shaped -- and continue to shape -- our expanding field.
Fieldnotes is currently led by Haidee Wasson, with the
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Tom Gunning
Photo Credit: Michael Kackman
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help of a committee comprised of Patrice Petro and Barbara Klinger. It is sponsored both by SCMS and by ARTHEMIS, a Concordia University based research team investigating the history and epistemology of moving image studies.
In
Fieldnotes
' latest recording, Scott Curtis interviews Tom Gunning. Listen to it
here
.
For more information on
Fieldnotes
, and to listen to past interviews, please visit their website
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SCMS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE WEBINAR:
NAVIGATING THE ACADEMIC JOB MARKET
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SCMS members are invited to join the Professional Development Committee in an online discussion of the academic job market, to be presented as a live webinar on
Saturday, October 24, at 12pm EST.
This free event will feature panelists who have landed tenure-track positions at a variety of institutions and led search committees of their own. Topics for discussion may include tailoring application materials for different types of positions and institutions; protocol for communicating with search committees; strategies for phone, skype, and in-person interviews; preparing for campus visits; negotiating job offers; and ways to gain teaching and service experience that may be particularly attractive to search committees. The webinar will conclude with a Q&A session.
For more information about the event and/or registration steps, please contact Kyle Edwards (Associate Professor and Director, Cinema Studies; Oakland University) at
[email protected].
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2015 SCMS AWARD WINNER SPOTLIGHT
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Heidi Rae Cooley
ANNE FRIEDBERG INNOVATIVE SCHOLARSHIP AWARD
Heidi Rae Cooley, from the University of South Carolina, was the winner of the 2015 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award for her book,
Finding August: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era
(Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press, 2014). As noted by the Award Committee, "Cooley's book offers an original and theoretically rich argument about contemporary mobile technologies, tracking, and our routine habits."
Who is your favorite film character or media figure?
Felix the Cat-who can resist those eyes and that gait. Plus, he carries a bag of tricks.
What is your favorite guilty pleasure movie or television show?
Miss Congeniality (2000; or if on plane,
Smash Hit (2014)
What lead you to study cinema and media?
After several years teaching middle and high school, I decided to return to graduate study. UC Irvine had just established a new PhD program in Visual Studies and I was eager to study with Anne Friedberg, one of the chief architects of the program, because her book
Window Shopping compelled me to rethink everyday screen practices. I later followed Anne to University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television (now the School of Cinematic Arts). There my interests in mobile screens and mobile-imaging met with an emerging interest in documentary media and practice.
What are you currently researching/working on?
I am beginning a new project that features American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. During the course of writing
Finding Augusta, I became increasingly convinced that he was/is the theorist of the twenty-first century.
What was the last movie you watched?
The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle, 2015)
What movie could you watch over and over again?
Images of the World and the Inscription of War (Harun Farocki, 1989).
Is there anything you would like to share with the membership?
Augusta fans should look for me at conferences and in print in the coming year as I share the results of a current collaborative project called Ward One, a location-aware mobile application for touchscreen device (iPhone initially) that invites interactors to explore on site the stories of Ward One community members whose homes, neighborhoods, and businesses fell victim to policies of urban renewal (1950s to 1970s).
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OLIVER GAYCKEN
BEST ESSAY IN AN EDITED COLLECTION
Oliver Gaycken, from the University of Maryland, was winner of the 2015 Best Essay in an Edited Collection award for "'A Living, Developing Egg is Present Before You': Animation, Scientific Visualization, Modeling" in
Animating Film Theory.
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). The Award Committee described Gaycken's work as "a fascinating exploration of the emergence of visual scientific languages in early cinema."
Who is your favorite film character or media figure?
In part because
I
've spent so much time with them, I'll say F. Martin Duncan, Percy Smith, and Billy Wilder.
What is your favorite guilty pleasure movie or television show?
The NFL
What led you to study cinema and media?
The texts were Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer and Lisa Cartwright's article "Experiments of Destruction" that appeared in Representations. The teachers were Tom Levin, Eduardo Cadava, Tom Keenan, then Miriam Hansen, Tom Gunning, and Jim Lastra.
What are you currently researching/working on?
I'
m finishing an article for an edited volume on the essay film, which involves Jonas Mekas, Bill Proenneke, and Henry David Thoreau
. I
'm in the early stages of two larger research/writing projects-one about the idea of the moving-image encyclopedia and another about the transit between scientific visualization and special effects over the last three decades.
What was the last movie you watched?
Last film in a cinema: Mr. Holmes
Last film on-demand (via TCM): Criss Cross
Last film on cable (i.e., FIOS, watched partially, with
commercial
interruptions): Out of Sight
Last film on Blu-Ray: Ponyo
Last film on YouTube:
Back to the Old Farm
Last film on an airplane:
Fury (2015)
What movie could you watch over and over again?
Vertigo
,
I
suppose. And
Altair.
Is there anything you would like to share with the membership?
My book, Devices of Curiosity
came out in April. I'll be participating in
this
conference
in September, which promises to be great.
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Fall is here and the semester has begun. Michael and Chris share some teaching tips, and we'd like to hear your teaching tips too: email us at
[email protected].
Our
Cinema Journal Presents segment features Debra Ramsay discussing war-based video games like
Call of Duty. Then we bring you another
Fieldnotes interview, this time with film scholar James Naremore, expert on Welles and Hitchcock.
Finally, we reveal the winner of our book giveaway and issue a call for more folks to help out with the Aca-Media podcast. Please email us at
[email protected] if you'd like to be part of the production team.
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ANNOUNCING
CINEMA JOURNAL 54.4
Table of Contents
Animating the
Cinéfils: Alain Resnais and the Cinema of Discovery
Karen Beckman
Prometheus in Chicago: Film Portrayals of the Chaining and Gagging of Bobby Seale and the "Real-ization" of Resistance
Greg Burris
Projections of Diasporic Sensibilities through Travel: Wong Kar Wai in/and
My Blueberry Nights
Yi Wei Chew
"Useful Cinema," of What Use?: Assessing the Role of Motion Pictures in the Largest Public Relations Campaign of the 1920s
Paul Monticone
New Hollywood in the Rust Belt: Urban Decline and Downtown Renaissance in
The King of Marvin Gardens and Rocky
Lawrence Webb
Book Reviews: Issues in Contemporary Television Studies
edited by Louisa Stein
edited by Diana Negra and Jorie Lagerway
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Loyola University Maryland is delighted to host Democracy and the Humanities, a two-day Symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Friday, Sept. 25 - Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015.
They invite you to join them as they celebrate fifty years of the promotion of excellence in the humanities.
All lectures and presentations during the Democracy and Humanities Symposium are free and open to the public. Seating, however, is limited; attendees must register for individual sessions in advance. Learn more.
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Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars
Fellowship Details:
Amount: $75,000, plus funds for research costs and related scholarly activities of up to $5,000 and for relocation up to $2,000
Tenure: one academic year
Completed applications must be submitted through the ACLS Online Fellowship Application system (ofa.acls.org) no later than 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time, September 23, 2015.
Notifications will be sent via email by late February 2016.
More details can be found on the ACLS website.
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