Cambridge Screen Media Group

Alternate Mondays, 17.15-19.00  during term time
CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor
Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT

Conveners

Prof David Trotter  (Faculty of English, University of Cambridge)
Prof Emma F Wilson  (French Literature and the Visual Arts, Dept of French, Fac of Modern and Medieval Languages)

Co-coveners

Maria Flood  (Department of French, St John's College)
Francesca Hardy (Department of French, Trinity Hall)
Hannah Mowat  (Department of French, Trinity Hall)
 

From its inception, the members of the Cambridge Screen Media Group have worked individually and collaboratively to develop an historical and theoretical knowledge of the factors which bind the technologies of the moving image into the cultures which have both shaped and been shaped by the successive forms they have taken. Research has explored the history and theory of moving image in relation to the history and theory of modern culture in general and in relation to the history and theory of other media (literature, the visual arts, music, architecture). The seminars and workshop proposed for 2011-12 are the first in a series of interdisciplinary events that will attempt a further integration of that research into contemporary practice. Our initial focus is on film and literature.

The seminar will address the following research questions:

Understanding Media Multiplicity

For the past hundred years or so, it has made little sense to define a medium either exclusively in its own terms, or in terms of its exclusive relation to another medium, since each has always already been defined by its many-faceted implication in a media ‘system’ or ‘ecology’. This term’s seminars will attempt to work through and beyond current conceptions of the relation between literature and film in order to establish terms for that broader implication.

Understanding the Real

Ideas of indexicality, and in a different register of sensuousness and intimacy, have proved particularly fruitful in exploring literature’s relation to film. We will consider the extent to which such ideas should continue to be used to define the ecological niche claimed by each of these media, separately or in conjunction.

 

To access the preparatory readings contact  H Mowat (hm201@cam.ac.uk)

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000).

David Trotter, ‘Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher’, in The Uses of Phobia: Essays on Literature and Film (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 156-70.

Paul Young, The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: Media Fantasy Films from Radio to the Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Jennifer Barker, The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)

D. N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge, Mass and London: Harvard University Press, 2007)

 

For regular updates and reminders, join our mailing list at:  CRASSH Screen Media

To contact the conveners/organisers, please click  here.


 Administrative contact: Esther Lamb (Grad/Fac Programme Manager)

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