Inventing Film Studies offers original and provocative insights into the institutional and intellectual foundations of cinema studies. Many scholars have linked the origins of the discipline to late-1960s developments in the academy such as structuralist theory and student protest. Yet this collection reveals the broader material and institutional forces-both inside and outside of the university-that have long shaped the field. Beginning with the first investigations of cinema in the early twentieth century, this volume provides detailed examinations of the varied social, political, and intellectual milieus in which knowledge of cinema has been generated. The contributors explain how multiple instantiations of film study have had a tremendous influence on the methodologies, curricula, modes of publication, and professional organizations that now constitute the university-based discipline. Extending the historical insights into the present, contributors also consider the directions film study might take in changing technological and cultural environments. Inventing Film Studies shows how the study of cinema has developed in relation to a constellation of institutions, technologies, practices, individuals, films, books, government agencies, pedagogies, and theories. Contributors illuminate the connections between early cinema and the social sciences, between film programs and nation-building efforts, and between universities and U.S. avant-garde filmmakers. They analyze the evolution of film studies in relation to the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Council movement of the 1940s and 1950s, the British Film Institute, influential journals, cinephilia, and technological innovations past and present. Taken together, the essays in this collection reveal the rich history and contemporary vitality of film studies. Contributors: Charles R. Acland, Mark Lynn Anderson, Mark Betz, Zoe Druick, Lee Grieveson, Stephen Groening, Haden Guest, Amelie Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Laura Mulvey, Dana Polan, D. N. Rodowick, Philip Rosen, Alison Trope, Haidee Wasson, Patricia White, Sharon Willis, Peter Wollen, Michael Zryd
Lee Grieveson is Reader in Film Studies and Director of the Graduate Programme in Film Studies at University College London. He is the author of Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America and a co-editor of The Silent Cinema Reader. Haidee Wasson is Associate Professor of Cinema at Concordia University. She is the author of Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema.
Acknowledgments ix The Academy and Motion Pictures / Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson xi Making Cinema Knowable Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct / Lee Grieveson 3 Taking Liberties: The Payne Fund Studies and the Creation of the Media Expert / Mark Lynn Anderson 38 "Reaching the Multimillions": Liberal Internationalism and the Establishment of Documentary Film / Zoe Druick 66 Young Art, Old Colleges: Early Episodes in the American Study of Film / Dana Polan 93 Making Cinema Educational Studying Movies at the Museum: The Museum of Modern Art and Cinema's Changing Object / Haidee Wasson 121 Classrooms, Clubs, and Community Circuits: Cultural Authority and the Film Council Movement, 1946-1957 / Charles R. Acland 149 Experimental Film and the Development of Film Study in America / Michael Zryd 182 From Cinephilia to Film Studies / Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen 217 Making Cinema Legible Experimentation and Innovation in Three American Film Journals of the 1950s / Haden Guest 235 Screen and 1970s Film Theory / Philip Rosen 264 (Re)Inventing Camera Obscura / Amelia Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Patricia White, and Sharon Willis 298 Little Books / Mark Betz 319 Making and Remaking Cinema Studies Footstool Film School: Home Entertainment as Home Education / Alison Trope 353 Dr. Strange Media, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Film Theory / D. N. Rodowick 374 Appendix Timeline for a History of Anglophone Film Culture and Film Studies / Stephen Groening 399 Selected Bibliography 419 About the Contributors 425 Index 429
A collection of institution-centered essays comprising a history of film studies as a discipline.
"This is the best film book that I've read in years. It covers the history of film studies, certainly the least historicized discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Contributors show that the field dates at least to the early twentieth century and that it can be traced through a number of institutions: not just the academy but also government, the museum, and the publishing industry, to name just three. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson have produced a book that will change the way film scholars think about their field."--Eric Smoodin, co-editor of Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method "This collection contributes new understandings to the history of film studies, particularly regarding the discipline's development in the humanities and its gradual abandonment of the methodological practices of the social sciences, in which it had its origins. Inventing Film Studies will be welcomed by academics working in cinema studies, and it will provide new entrants to the field with an important introduction to the history of their study."--Richard Maltby, author of Hollywood Cinema
