CHAIR'S REPORT TO THE MEMBERSHIP SOCIETY FOR CINEMA STUDIES CAUCUS ON CLASS JULY 15, 1997 In lieu of sending you minutes from our annual meeting at the Ottawa SCS conference this past May 15th-18th, I am sending you this report which incorporates both what was proposed and discussed at the annual meeting, and updated information about what has happened since the conference. At the Ottawa conference, the Caucus on Class sponsored two panels: 1. "Class Politics, Criminal Pleasures, 'Noir', and 'Neo-Noir'," and 2. "Fundamentalist Fictions: Politics and/of Hermeneutics in Contemporary Moving-Image Culture." With the Graduate Student Caucus the Caucus on Class also sponsored the workshop "Labor and the Contemporary Academy." In addition, the Caucus on Class sponsored the screening of Struggles in Steel and Balagan. Furthermore, outgoing Caucus on Class Chair Terri Ginsberg was a featured speaker at the plenary session "Strategies for Ensuring the Future of Film and Television Studies." Finally, at the annual meeting of the Caucus on Class, I, Bob Nowlan, Co-Chair of the Caucus on Class from 1995 through 1997, assumed the position of Chair of the Caucus on Class, and Peter Sarram was elected Co-Chair of the Caucus on Class for 1997-1999 (and Chair for 1999-2001); Terri Ginsberg is now Co-Chair of the SCS Coordinating Committee for Race, Class, and Gender. The bulk of the annual meeting was devoted towards exposition and discussion of my proposed agenda for the Caucus on Class for the next two years. This agenda was received positively, with no objections and only several additional suggestions. I will now recount this proposed agenda, and, once again, as I indicated at our annual meeting, I welcome your response to my proposal -- and your assistance in our collective efforts. My fundamental commitment is to work as hard as possible to advance the objectives set forth in our mission statement. In doing so I want to build upon, and to continue, the extraordinary efforts Terri has made over the past four years to raise the critical consciousness of the Society on issues of class in theory and in practice, and to press the SCS to commit itself towards actively, and proactively, fighting to advance the material interests of all its members and towards working for progressive social change in the academy and beyond. I will maintain Terri's insistence upon the indispensable necessity of critical theory and her vigorous commitment towards bringing to bear critical theory within and throughout our intellectual, pedagogical, and political praxis as cinema studies teachers and scholars who are seriously interested in concerns of "class." I will also maintain Terri's equally staunch commitments to working as closely as possible with the other SCS caucuses on issues of common interest and concern; to reaching out and encouraging more, and new, people to become actively involved in the work of the Caucus on Class; and to developing and refining our Caucus on Class web page to make it as useful as is possible, in the information and the links it provides for cinema and media students and scholars, and for progressive intellectuals and activists. I think it is important to note here that we all, not only within the Caucus on Class but also throughout the Society for Cinema Studies, owe Terri Ginsberg our sincere gratitude for all of her hard work, dedication, commitment, and conscience during her four years of leadership of the Caucus on Class. I am very grateful to have served as Co-Chair of the Caucus on Class for two years while Terri served as Chair, as I have learned much from her that will prove indispensable to me as I carry out my responsibilities as Caucus Chair. My proposals for 1998 and 1999 SCS conference panels build upon work that we have already been doing, including panels we have organized and presented over the course of the past several years, and including topics in which members of the Caucus have already expressed and demonstrated substantial interest. I propose four key areas in which we attempt to organize panels over the course of the next two years: 1. Panels which continue to engage critically with prominent trends in contemporary cinema and media theory and criticism, considering the class politics of these approaches. Here I am thinking, for example, of prospective critiques of: a. The recent return of "cognitive studies" and neoclassical phenomenological approaches. b. The resurgent popularity and increasingly widespread return, more generally, of formalist and aestheticist approaches. c. Popular, and populist, forms of "appreciative" multiculturalism. d. Technologistic and scientistic approaches which combine an utopian futurism with a reductionist fetishism, especially as these gather energy on the advent of "the new millennium." 2. Panels which continue to engage critically with prominent directions in classic and contemporary film making, again considering the class politics of these approaches. Here, I am thinking, for example, of panels in the areas of: a. Class and crime in Hollywood film making -- past/present/future, including potentially continuing to focus on noir, neo-noir, and post-noir films. b. "Post-Gen X" films of youth alienation and rebellion, including a possible consideration of the diverse discourses of "cynicism" in contemporary commercial and not-for-profit film making. c. Historically changing relations between as well as evaluations of "studio" versus "independent" film making. 3. Panels exploring the class dimensions of the thematic focus for the next two year's conferences, starting with that of the San Diego conference -- focusing on intra-national and inter-national borders in the age of trans-national capitalism. I am especially interested in engagements with questions of: a. Immigration/emigration. b. The class structure of -- and class struggles within -- the "new" "global city." c. Interdeterminate interrelations among race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class. 4. Panels involving a critical examination of the ways in which popular film and television mystifies -- especially elides, evades, conceals, marginalizes, and trivializes -- relations between labor and class. Here I am particularly interested in confronting changing modes of mystification, what these changes mean, what their consequences might be, and what contradictions might exist within these changes that can be taken advantage of for resistant and oppositional ends. I have also expressed interest in working together with representatives of other caucuses on co-sponsoring panels in any one or more of these areas, and interest in organizing workshops in 1998, 1999, and as long as necessary, on "labor and the academy," building and following upon what we accomplished at this year's conference and yet taking account of new developments. I would like next year's workshop to involve significant representation from Southern California labor activists, and to include additional theorization of the nature and the course of academic labor struggles in the midst of the current multi-dimensional crisis of working conditions and working opportunities within the academy. I have proposed working together, once again, with the Graduate Student Caucus on this workshop -- as well as with representatives of any other Caucus or Caucuses who might wish to contribute as well. Because Bulletin Board proposals were due less than two weeks after the end of the Ottawa conference, I have had to put together "official" descriptions for the Caucus on Class panels and workshops to be held at the 1998 San Diego conference very quickly. In doing so I have attempted to respond to a consensus of interest among Caucus on Class members. I have consulted with others who have expressed particularly strong interest in the prospective Caucus on Class sessions at next year's conference. The proposals for the six proposed Caucus on Class panels and workshops at the 1998 San Diego SCS conference -- as they will appear in the Bulletin Board mailing to be sent out to SCS members in July -- are as follows: 1. WORKSHOP: LABOR AND THE CONTEMPORARY ACADEMY This workshop engages in a collective theorization of the nature and course of academic labor struggles in the midst of the current multidimensional crisis of working conditions and opportunities within higher education today. It will also include reports on, and sharings of, practical strategies for coping, resisting, and progressing. 2. PANEL: MYSTIFYING CLASS, MARGINALIZING LABOR Films and videos are often recommended because they engage extensively with issues of labor and class, yet the connections drawn between these issues are often elided or mystified through religious, pseudo-scientific, and "commonsense" discourses, among others. Especially welcome are cross-cultural and cross-historical analyses of mystificatory strategies such as these. 3. WORKSHOP: TEACHING CLASS IN TEACHING FILM How is it possible to teach intellectually rigorous and politically progressive understandings of class in -- and by -- teaching film? Contributions to this workshop are especially welcome which discuss the teaching of class, in teaching film, in its interdeterminate interconnections with race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexuality. 4. PANEL: SEX, CLASS, AND CRIME IN NOIR, NEO-NOIR, AND POST-NOIR FILM Papers are welcome which inquire critically into the political and ideological implications of the historically evolving ways in which noir, neo-noir, and post-noir films engage issues of sexual conflict and class struggle (especially in their intersection) through the mediation of narratives of crime and discourses of criminality. 5. WORKSHOP: THE POLITICS OF CLASS AND/VERSUS IDENTITY IN (POST)MODERN FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES Are class politics and identity politics necessarily opposed? If so, why so? If not, why not? What are class-based theories of identity politics? What are identity-based theories of class politics? How does this conflict play itself out within (post)modern film and television studies, and with what larger social-historical consequences? 6. PANEL: THE RETREAT FROM CRITICAL THEORY IN CONTEMPORARY FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES Does the increasing popularity within contemporary film and television studies of neo-classical phenomenology, cognitive studies, appreciative multiculturalism, post-analytic neopragmatism, experientialist (post)identity politics, and, more broadly, resurgent formalism and aestheticism, mark a retreat from critical theory? What are the intellectual, institutional, and political consequences of these trends? I am pleased that Janet Loveland and the Graduate Student Caucus have agreed, once again, to co-sponsor the workshop on "labor and the contemporary academy," and that Linda Dittmar, 1998 SCS Conference Program Committee Chair, has agreed to chair the workshop "Teaching Class in Teaching Film," Peter Sarram, new Caucus on Class Co-Chair, has agreed to chair the panel "Mystifying Class, Marginalizing Labor," and Terri Ginsberg has agreed to chair the panel "The Retreat from Critical Theory in Contemporary Film and Television Studies." I want to thank each of these people for their readiness to help out, and I want to encourage others to volunteer to get involved in helping organize and facilitate any one or more of the panels or workshops where you have a particular interest. Every year many members of our caucus are actively involved in presenting, chairing, responding, and otherwise at the SCS conference, and yet many times not as part of Caucus on Class sponsored events. Don't forget that we are here, we need your support to continue viable and effective, and that your efforts are what make the Caucus what it is and what it will be. Six sessions is twice what we sponsored at this past year's conference, and yet I am confident we can do it -- and that we can make these sessions powerful and significant. Many conference attendees expressed a great deal of interest in the Caucus on Class and its activities in Ottawa, and already so far six individuals have contacted me to express interest in presenting as part of one or more of our sessions in San Diego. I would like to urge as many of you as possible to join these six. At the annual meeting a consensus supported the idea of putting together pre-constituted panels, or at the least panels which are as cohesive and coherent as possible, and where the papers, and the presenters, address each other as far as possible. We want to break with "business as usual" for panels at academic conferences, and make our sessions genuinely urgent and interventionary. Please contact the designated panel chair, and/or myself, as soon as possible, at the least to let us know of your potential interest in presenting so that we can work together throughout the process of preparing our panels and workshops. Also, please send me suggestions and recommendations of people whom you would like to see and hear present as part of any one of these panels or workshops, and please let others -- who are not Caucus on Class members, but who are your friends, colleagues, and comrades -- know what we are doing, and encourage them to contact me if they are interested in presenting, and to submit a proposal or proposals for any one or more of our sessions. Terri Ginsberg has offered, and I have accepted her offer, to serve as chief "scout" for films of interest that we will screen at the next two years' conferences. I have informed her that, in considering films which the Caucus on Class might sponsor next year, I am especially interested in films which: 1. Engage interdeterminate interconnections among race, ethnicity, nationality, "transnationality," gender, sexuality, and class. 2. Engage new class-conscious strategies -- or recover the history of past class-conscious struggles -- for labor justice. 3. Address the class dimensions of contemporary relations between the U.S. and Mexico, including struggles surrounding immigration/emigration. 4. Address struggles over, and backlashes against, affirmative action in the U.S., and in particular in California. 5. Explore the meeting of multiculturalism and transnational economic and political interests in contemporary California, especially Southern California, and in adjacent states in the U.S. West and Southwest. 6. Address interrelations between class and crime, and ideologies of criminality as instrument of oppression. 7. Offer critical reflections on, or reexaminations of, the class politics of "postmodern culture," "postmodern theory," and "postmodern politics" at the edge of "the new millennium." Terri knows of these particular interests as far as films are concerned, and will keep these in mind as she searches for useful films for next year's conference. I also welcome suggestions for films which we might screen at next year's conference from all other Caucus on Class members. Beyond sponsoring panels, workshops, and film screenings at the annual SCS conference, I propose that we begin work on two additional Caucus on Class sponsored projects. Both projects follow up on interest that has been expressed to me from others within the Caucus and the Society, and beyond. First, I would like to work together with other interested people in developing a critical bibliography for cinema students and scholars of useful materials on class and film. Second, I would like to work together with other interested people in putting together a book-length manuscript for eventual publication on "Critical Theory, Class Politics, and Cinema Studies" which will follow upon the recently published The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class (Minnesota, 1996). The book I propose will, however, be different from The Hidden Foundation because it will not be organized in as conventionally eclectic a manner as the latter but rather will work to advance a sustained argument for a coherent, principled, and committed set of positions -- representing a range of significant "nodes of contestation" within the Caucus on Class -- on what, how, and why class issues need to be brought to the forefront of scholarship and pedagogy in cinema and media studies on the advent of the 21st century. Of course both the prospective critical bibliography and the prospective book may take quite a while to complete, and, for that matter, may prove beyond our resources at this point in time. And yet, I welcome any and all interest in working with me on either one or both of these projects. Please let me know if you are interested in contributing to either or both of these projects. Please feel free to contact me with your questions, comments, suggestions, and recommendations. I look forward to working with you. Bob Nowlan Chair, Caucus on Class, Society for Cinema Studies Department of English University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004 (715) 836-3167 (Campus) (715) 838-9291 (Home) [log in to unmask] (E-mail) Caucus on Class Web page: http://pages.nyu.edu/~tjg9373/ ****************************************************************************** If you have not already completed the following mailing list and informational questionnaire form, and sent this to me, please do so as soon as possible. If you wish to be included on the Caucus on Class mailing list (and to be included as a member of the Caucus on Class) please write in your name, postal address, phone number, fax number, and e-mail address in the appropriate spaces below. I would appreciate it if you would fill out the rest of the requested information, and, as possible, answer, however briefly, the questions at the end. 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NAME: MAILING ADDRESS: PHONE NUMBER: FAX NUMBER: E-MAIL ADDRESS: INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION/ACADEMIC STATUS: PARTICULAR INTERESTS IN CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES: IDEAS FOR FUTURE CAUCUS ON CLASS-SPONSORED PANELS AND WORKSHOPS: IDEAS FOR FUTURE CAUCUS ON CLASS-SPONSORED FILM SCREENINGS: IDEAS FOR OTHER CAUCUS ON CLASS PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES: EXTENT OF OWN ABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO BE ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN CAUCUS ON CLASS WORK OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT TWO YEARS: ____I DO WISH THE INFORMATION AND THE RESPONSES I HAVE PROVIDED ON THIS QUESTIONNAIRE TO BE SHARED WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CAUCUS ON CLASS. ____I DO NOT WISH THE INFORMATION AND THE RESPONSES I HAVE PROVIDED ON THIS QUESTIONNAIRE TO BE SHARED WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CAUCUS ON CLASS. ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]