December 12: Meenasarani Linde Murugan and Hannah Frank on Cultural Production in the Twentieth Century

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, December 12 to welcome Meenasarani Linde Murugan (Ph.D. Candidate at Northwestern) for her talk, "Offbeat: Afro-Orientalism in Postwar Music on Television," and Hannah Frank (Ph.D. Candidate at U.Chicago) for her talk, "What Happens Between Each Frame: Or, The Photographic Reproduction of Documents."  Nick Davis (Northwestern) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, December 12 at 6:30pm
Meenasarani Linde Murugan, Ph.D. Candidate, Northwestern 
"Offbeat: Afro-Orientalism in Postwar Music on Television"
Hannah Frank, Ph.D. Candidate, U.Chicago
"What Happens Between Each Frame: Or, The Photographic Reproduction of Documents"
Respondent: Nick Davis, Northwestern

Murugan describes her talk as follows:

Scholarship on popular music often emphasizes the 1960s youth counterculture in fostering Indian music in the US.  Yet before this, classical Indian musicians, Ali Akbar Khan on sarod and Chatur Lal on tabla, were sponsored by the Ford Foundation to come to the US and perform on Omnibus (CBS, April 10, 1955). Lal made another appearance on the program with jazz drummer Jo Jones (CBS, December 2, 1956). In a moment of musical conversation and collaboration they improvised riffs on Juan Tizol's "Caravan." Two performers of color visualize this musical meeting of "East" and "West." In contrast to the commonplace white appropriation of Indian culture in the 1960s, I recover postwar music's engagements with India to reveal an Afro-Orientalism. While I draw from the popular press, LPs, film, and radio broadcasts, I want to emphasize the importance of television as an emerging institution in representing, mobilizing, and/or limiting this intermingling. I argue that postwar music on television performed Orientalism in a manner that resonated with a transnational Afro-Asian solidarity. Yet, as Afro-Orientalism in art and politics often consisted of messy translations and false equivalencies of oppression, I demonstrate how television's musical representations of India trafficked in various contradictions in regards to the sonic and visual expressions of race, nationality, and ethnicity.

Frank describes her talk as follows:

This talk is adapted from my dissertation, "The Traces of Production: Art, Labor, and the American Animated Cartoon, 1928-1961," which proposes an aesthetics of celluloid animation that engages critically with labor practices at the major U.S. studios (e.g., Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Walter Lantz, United Productions of America, etc.). Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Sekula, I argue that animated cartoons double as photographic records of historical documents. If read frame-by-frame, animated cartoons can yield evidence of a production process that would otherwise be obscured. My talk seeks to demonstrate this claim through the close examination of two shorts from 1941, Bob Clampett's Meet John Doughboy and Walter Lantz's $21 a Day (Once a Month).

November 7: James Hodge on Lateral Time

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, November 7 to welcome James Hodge (Northwestern) for his talk, "Lateral Time."  Daniel Morgan (UChicago) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, November 7 at 6:30pm
James Hodge, Northwestern 
"Lateral Time"
Respondent: Daniel Morgan, UChicago

Hodge describes his talk as follows:

This talk comes from the second chapter of my book project, Animate Archaeology: Digital Media and the Aesthetics of History.  In the book I argue for the novel significance of animation for the aesthetic expression of historical temporality in the age of new media.  This talk examines the concept of lateral time, which I define as the temporal regime native to processes operating beyond the threshold of human experience.  Building upon Paul Ricoeur, I argue for the centrality of lateral time for the task of articulating historical temporality in the context of digital networks. Moving beyond the primacy Ricoeur accords the written trace, I also argue that animation plays a crucial role in opening up encounters with the lateral time of networks.  In the latter sections of the talk I pursue these arguments through the analysis of two long duration experimental, digital art works: John F. Simon Jr.'s Every Icon and Barbara Lattanzi's Optical De-dramatization Engine.  The stakes for this argument rest (1) with the contemporary specification of historical temporality and (2) with the elucidation of the critical role played by digital moving image aesthetics in that endeavor. 

October 3: D.N. Rodowick on Christian Metz and the Invention of Theory

Note: If you will be attending the reception immediately following the talk, please RSVP by Friday, September 27 to the official event Evite.

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Please save the date for the opening of the 2013-14 Chicago Film Seminar. We are pleased to announce that on Thursday, October 3rd at 6:30pm D.N. Rodowick, Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in Cinema and Media Studies and the College at University of Chicago, will give a talk entitled "After the Long Eclipse: Christian Metz and the Invention of Theory."  Domietta Torlasco, associate professor of Italian and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern, will deliver the response. 

We will convene at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd. (at State St.), Room LL 102.  **We ask that you use the State St. entrance to the building, located at 247 S. State.**  Maps can be found here and here.  A reception will follow.

Rodowick describes his talk as follows:

In this paper, I will argue that the early work of Christian Metz inaugurates a discourse of "theory." In a group of texts published between 1964 and 1972, Christian Metz inaugurates a theretofore unknown discourse of "theory." Metz is one of the first figures to make present and perspicuous a new concept of theory by constructing theory as an object, examining its history, and testing its present and potential claims to generate knowledge. In these seven short years, for film studies at least, Metz becomes "discursive" in Foucault's sense. Not just the author of film theories but the focal point of a new system of address, which emits from a new institutional context with its own rhetorical style and sense of place in history, setting out a new conceptual framework defined by precise principles of pertinence and implicit criteria of inclusion and exclusion for the practice of theory.

We look forward to seeing you there. 

April 18: Susan Ohmer on Animation and Cultural Geography

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, April 18 to welcome Susan Ohmer (Notre Dame) for her talk, "Animation and Cultural Geography: Disney and Standard Oil Remap the U.S." Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Loyola) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, April 18 at 6:30pm
Susan Ohmer, Notre Dame 
"Animation and Cultural Geography: Disney and Standard Oil Remap the U.S."
Respondent: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Loyola

Ohmer describes her talk as follows:

In May 1939, the Walt Disney Studio, in collaboration with Standard Oil of California, launched a national marketing campaign designed to promote travel to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. For the promotion, the studio ran ads featuring well-known Disney characters that traveled across the country to attend the exhibition, stopping at Standard Oil stations along the way. “Cries Sleepy: ‘Standard saves the day!’” as one proclaimed. In their travels, the seven dwarfs, Mickey, Donald and Goofy stopped at various historic landmarks, from Puget Sound to Carlsbad Caverns and Yosemite, on their way to the exhibition, which the studio called “Treasure Island”. Children were encouraged to follow these trips by tracking the characters across a large map of the United States and by collecting coupons from Disney comic books that they could paste onto the map. In newspapers, magazines, and comic books, the Disney studio remapped the U.S. as a series of tourist destinations visited by its fictional animated creatures.

Julianne Burton, Lisa Cartwright, Eric Smoodin and others have analyzed Disney’s construction of a touristic gaze in Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, films the studio produced as part of the “Good Neighbor” project for Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Even before these films, however, the studio constructed a new cultural geography for the U.S., mapping its characters across a landscape defined as a combination of historic monuments and natural attractions. The Standard Oil promotion developed a car culture for U.S. children who would go on to become the adult drivers of the 1950s and mapped U.S. history and geography as destinations for family leisure fifteen years before the opening of Disneyland.

This presentation draws on methods from cultural geography, critical studies of the west in fiction and film, studies of car culture and road movies, and analyses of Disney’s films about Latin America to understand the development and significance of the Disney-Standard Oil collaboration. My talk will include slides of ads, the treasure map, comic books and other artifacts that have been collected over several years. Only a few items from this campaign exist in archives; thus, the presentation offers material unavailable anywhere else that can shed new light on the shifting representations of U.S. history, space, and culture in Disney productions.

March 21: Luisela Alvaray on Venezuelan Historical Films

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, March 21 to welcome Luisela Alvaray (DePaul) for her talk, "Claiming the Past: Venezuelan Historical Films and Public Politics." Gilberto Blasini (UW-Milwaukee) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, March 21 at 6:30pm
Luisela Alvaray, DePaul 
"Claiming the Past: Venezuelan Historical Films and Public Politics"
Respondent: Gilberto Blasini, UW-Milwaukee

Alvaray describes her talk as follows:

In 2000, the most financially successful film in Venezuela was Diego Risquez’ Manuela Saenz: La libertadora del Libertador, a revision of the life of Simon Bolívar’s best known lover. In 2012, famous Venezuelan performer Edgar Ramírez depicts Bolívar himself—a guiding force in the Latin American struggle for independence from the Spanish empire—in the epic Libertador (dir. Alberto Arvelo).  Between the release of these two films, at least nine more historical revisionist features and many other short films have come out that take us back to different stages of Venezuelan history—the independence period, the dictatorship of the 1950s, and events of a more recent history in the 1990s.

Without a doubt, this trend reflects a society persistently exploring its past and has to do with the fact that the Venezuelan government has had reconstruction of historical events as an overt policy for its cinematic institutions. This trend is consonant with the wider official discourse evoking history at every level of society to justify present regulations and policies. In example, during the last decade, a national standard for history textbooks was mandated for the elementary school system. Nowadays, there continues to be tremendous public attention to how historical events should be related and transmitted. The group of historical films that have come out is, therefore, part of a swarm of printed and audiovisual representations that organize and are continually weaving Venezuelans collective consciousness of history and strengthening particular visions of the present.

By focusing on the historical film Taita Boves (Luis Alberto Lamata, 2010), I will trace some of the ideological currents that traverse Venezuelan society.  As George Lipsitz has asserted, the circulation of ideas through mass media has a crucial role in the constitution of a collective memory and, therefore, in the formation of individual and group identity in the modern world. Following this line of thought, it seems important to formulate questions as to the role of popular culture—and in our case, of popular discourse conveyed through film—in social and political life.  Ultimately, my goal is to contribute to the theoretical debate around the constitution of national historical consciousness by stressing history as an articulation contingent upon narratives and social discourses.

February 7: Thomas Elsaesser on Reevaluating 3D

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, February 7 to welcome Thomas Elsaesser (University of Amsterdam) for his talk, "Reevaluating 3D." Tom Gunning (UChicago) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, February 7 at 6:30pm
Thomas Elsaesser, University of Amsterdam 
"Reevaluating 3D"
Respondent: Tom Gunning, U.Chicago

Elsaesser's talk will tease out the implications of two of his recent articles, "Avatar- Access for All" (New Review of Film and Television) and "The Return of 3D" (Critical Inquiry), to ask if, in light of what we know about a hundred years of Hollywood, we can finally evaluate whether or not 3D has been a force for good (progressive, liberal, emancipatory, utopian) or bad (reactionary, ideological, spearhead not only of capitalism but also of the military-entertainment complex)-- or if this very question is wrongly posed to begin with.

January 17: Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece and Matt Hauske on Horizontality and Monumentality

Please join the Chicago Film Seminar at 6:30 pm on Thursday, January 17 to welcome Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Ph.D. Candidate at Northwestern) for her talk, "The Monumental Screen: Perfect Vision, Disembodiment, and American Theatrical Architecture in the Era of Widescreen," and Matt Hauske (Ph.D. Candidate at U.Chicago) for his talk, "The Western's New Horizons: Wide Screens, Big Canvases, and the Great Outdoors in the 1950s." Don Crafton (Notre Dame) will provide the response. The CFS will be held at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102, using the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State.

Thursday, January 17 at 6:30pm
Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Ph.D. Candidate, Northwestern 
"The Monumental Screen: Perfect Vision, Disembodiment, and American Theatrical Architecture in the Era of Widescreen"
Matt Hauske, Ph.D. Candidate, U.Chicago
"The Western's New Horizons: Wide Screens, Big Canvases, and the Great Outdoors in the 1950s"
Respondent: Don Crafton, Notre Dame

Szczepaniak-Gillece describes her talk as follows:

Most histories of widescreen theorize that the expansive screens of the 1950s ushered in a moment of bodily immersion, where the spectator's entire physical form along with her eyes seemed swept up in the picture.  This lecture will focus on other discourses of widescreen exhibition, where theatrical space and enormous screen were understood to work together to promote perfect disembodied vision.  While a majority of exhibitors and promoters engaged primarily with sensation, others that I will focus on understood the gigantic screen as potentially empathically and psychically rather than bodily liberating.  In this way, the architecture of widescreen in the American movie theater can be understood as material expressions of theories of the body's and the mind's proper place in aesthetic experience.  By eliminating peripheral theatrical detail and moving the screen farther and farther into the space of reception, some screen and cinema designers sought to freeze spectators into their seats, struck dumb by the monumentality of the images filling the entirety of their line of sight.

Hauske describes his talk as follows:

This paper addresses at the appeal of widescreen cinema processes in the early 1950s via the western, a genre whose emphasis on landscape and action was thought to especially suit it to the new screen dimensions.  Mainly discussed as a reaction to the economic and aesthetic threat of television, processes like CinemaScope and VistaVision also tapped into, and reacted against, other leisure practices that were increasingly popular among the growing, income-disposing middle class.  In the context of the western, these practices included a host of "outdoor" activities, including camping, hiking, fishing, and water sports.  The immersive horizontality of widescreen westerns stood in for outdoor experiences while simultaneously serving as promotions for them.  This dual emphasis on immersion and horizontality is indicative of a larger cultural environment during the postwar years, one that focused on a break from the mundane reality of the "organization man" and suburban conformity and that also includes the loose program of Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionism.