Dear Colleagues,
On 16 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 StudiesFriday, September 16 — 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT / 16:00 UDT
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.