Dear Colleagues,


On 15 September, SCMS' Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest
Group will be hosting a virtual forum (details below; pdf attached). We're
especially keen to have attendees from outside our subfield. Please share
widely.


For further information, contact Tanya Goldman ([log in to unmask])
and Madison Brown ([log in to unmask]).




*What's In A Name?*

*A Forum on the Past, Present, and Potential Futures of Nontheatrical Media
Studies*

*Friday, September 16 — 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT / 16:00 UDT*



*https://www.eventbrite.com/e/whats-in-a-name-tickets-387747421977
<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/whats-in-a-name-tickets-387747421977>*



The English-language term ‘nontheatrical’ has long been used to connote
modes of ‘difference’ — in form, function, and exhibition contexts —from
dominant commercial media cultures. Recent scholarship has drawn attention
to a capacious body of historically neglected works in many understudied
genres (such as educational film, industrials, and science films etc.) and
developed a variety of interdisciplinary interpretative frameworks to make
sense of their meaning. As this burgeoning subfield continues to grow, the
‘nontheatrical’ label has become inadequate to represent the global
community of scholars and archivists working in the field.



With an eye towards renaming the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’
“Nontheatrical Film and Media” Scholarly Interest Group, this forum invites
participants across disciplines to assess the explanatory value and — just
as importantly — the limitations of the SIG’s current name. What more
nuanced and inclusive terms might better represent the complexity of
objects, approaches, and politics that animate the study of nontheatrical
media? How would renaming the SIG allow us to move beyond the fields’
linguistic bias towards English-language scholarship? Might renaming the
SIG invite scholars of digital media to consider the value of nontheatrical
and useful media as explanatory frameworks?


Contact event hosts Madison Brown ([log in to unmask])
& Tanya Goldman ([log in to unmask]) for further information.

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