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Please join the Chicago Film Seminar on Thursday, April 28th, 7:00PM, for a roundtable discussion, titled "Defining the Field." Bringing together scholars with diverse perspectives on the field, this workshop opens up a discussion of the evolving contours of cinema studies as it confronts new media and technologies, new methods, and new intellectual and institutional challenges. The conversation will focus broadly on the objects and approaches of cinema and media studies as they are transforming with the academic landscape.The workshop participants will include: Gerald Butters, Aurora University D. N. Rodowick, University of Chicago Salomé Skvirsky, University of Chicago Neil Verma, Northwestern University Pam Wojcik, University of Notre Dame Bios:  Gerald R. Butters Jr. is a Professor of History at Aurora University. He is author of the following books - Beyond Blaxploitation (2016), From Sweetback to Superfly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago's Loop, 1970-1975 (2015...

On February 18th, Chicago Film Seminar hosted a graduate student panel on science fiction and Soviet documentary style. Our panelists were Stephen Babish (Northwestern University) and Zdenko Mandusic (University of Chicago). A response was provided by Professor Joshua Malitsky (Indiana University). In his paper, titled "Empty Spaces: Large-Scale Plans and Urban Dystopia in  A Clockwork Orange  and  THX 1138 ,” Babish began by outlining the methodology and major claims of his dissertation project on the capacity of science fiction films of the 1970s to produce a critical architectural space through their engagement with the modernist built environment.  It then traced two case studies that analyze the way in which films from this era exploited notoriously incomplete and over-budget large-scale modernist construction projects to critique both their forms and the ideologies underlying them.    To do so, it utilized archival research into both the papers of the...

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar on  Thursday ,  February 18th , at  6:30pm , for a graduate student panel on science fiction and Soviet documentary style. Our panelists will be Stephen Babish (Northwestern University) and Zdenko  Mandušić (University of Chicago). A response will be provided by Joshua Malitsky (Indiana University).  In his paper,   “Empty Spaces: Large-Scale Plans and Urban Dystopia in  A Clockwork Orange  and  THX 1138 ," Babish traces  two case studies, on the filming of  A Clockwork Orange  in the Southeast London development of Thamesmead and the filming of  THX 1138  in the San Francisco Bay Area's unopened BART system, and analyzes the way in which these films exploited notoriously incomplete and over-budget construction projects to critique both their forms and the ideologies underlying them.   In his paper “The Documentary Style in Soviet Cinema of the 1960s,”  Mandušić...

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar on Wednesday, January 13th, at 6:30pm, for an exciting roundtable discussion, titled “Why Film History?: Discipline, Institution, and the Archive in Spanish Cinema Studies.” Roundtable participants, Professors Vicente Sánchez-Biosca and Steven Marsh, describe the event as follows: This discussion seeks to address approaches to the cinema of Spain. While Film History as a sub-discipline of cinema and media studies is an important institutional component of almost all media and cinema studies departments, in Spain—uniquely—it is the dominant field in such departments. Indeed, Film History is so dominant that anyone – absolutely anyone – writing on film is considered to be a film historian.  History has a particular resonance in Spain, one doubtlessly connected not only to the trauma but also to the telos of the country’s Civil War (about which Vicente Sánchez Biosca has written extensively). This discussion aims to interrogate historiography and h...

Please join Black Cinema House and Chicago Film Seminar on Friday, December 4, 7:00pm, for a screening and discussion of  The Littlest Rebel  (David Butler, 1935, 74 min).  Jacqueline Stewart (University of Chicago, Professor of Cinema & Media Studies, BCH curator) and Miriam Petty (Northwestern University, Assistant Professor of Radio/TV/Film) will introduce and lead discussion afterward.   Black Cinema House describes the screening as follows: Featuring the most enduring pairing of Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson,  The Littlest Rebel  focuses on the tribulations of a plantation-owning family during the Civil War. As battles rage and the family is caught trying to flee, the little girl and the slave perform musical numbers toget her to raise money and secure a pardon from President Lincoln.  The Littlest Rebel  is also a testament to the enduring cultural practice of blackface minstrelsy, featuring a scene that often surpris...

On October 29th, Professor Scott Curtis (Northwestern University) delivered a talk, titled “Experts and Their Images: Vision, Form, and the Historiography of Media Use,” at the Chicago Film Seminar. A response was provided by Oliver Gaycken (University of Maryland). Using case studies from his book The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany (Columbia University Press), Curtis explored the implications of non-theatrical films (specifically those made by experts such as scientists, physicians, and educators) for film and media historiography. He began by stating the objective of his project: “At the broadest level, I am interested in the criteria for the legitimacy of motion picture technology as a tool or good object within specific disciplines or communities. The book focuses on Germany before World War I to examine the interaction between motion pictures and four disciplines: science (specifically human motion studies, physics, and bi...

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar on Thursday, October 29th,   at 6:30 PM, to welcome Professor Scott Curtis  (Northwestern University) for his talk, " Experts and Their Images: Vision, Form, and the Historiography of Media Use ."  A response will be provided by Oliver Gaycken (University of Maryland). Reception to follow! Scott Curtis is associate professor of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University, director of the Communication Program at Northwestern University in Qatar, and president of Domitor, the international society for the study of early cinema. He has written extensively on scientific and medical uses of motion pictures, and his book on film and expert vision,  The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany , has just been published by Columbia University Press.  Professor Curtis describes his talk as follows: Expert filmmakers--including scientists, physicians, psychologists, educators, and others who use m...