media scholarship//media practice

April 30, 2013

Today I was inducted into Northwestern University's Society of Presidential Fellows. I'm really honored to be a part of this incredible community of emerging scholars , each of whom is the outstanding researcher in their field.
I am very eager to begin working with them on developing cross-disciplinary events and sharing our research.
My sincere thank you to The Graduate School at Northwestern for the lovely ceremony.

April 6, 2013
Today I am presenting a paper on Len Lye's transtiion from filmmaking to large-scale kinetic scultpture at the 9th University of Chicago conference in Cinema and Media Studies. This year's conference theme was "Visions of Scale: Duration, Magnification, Perspective". It was a pleasure to be part of this really great two-day conference, which included so many fantastic papers that spoke to one another. Mary Ann Doane's keynote address on scale and perspective was particularly breathtaking in scope and inspiring.

March 11, 2013
Since the official announcement was just released this morning, I can finally confirm that I have been awarded a 2013 Northwestern Presidential Fellowship! This fellowship is awarded to seven doctoral candidates from across all university departments. The fellowship recognizes strong interdisciplinary work and innovative research. I am the first person from the Department of Radio/TV/Film to have ever received this award, and this would not have been possible without my department's nomination and all the faculty who contributed toward the department's letter. I already briefly met some of the other faculty and student fellows, who come from a range of arts, humanities, and STEM disciplines.

March 9, 2013
Today I am chairing an exciting panel on "Animated Movement and Cinema's Techne" at the SCMS 2013 conference (Ballroom Space, Drake Hotel, Chicago). The panel will include papers by Tom Gunning (University of Chicago), Andrew Johnston (Amherst College), Greg Zinman (Smithsonian Institute), and my own paper on the development of different philosophies of movement in early animation practice. Additionally, I will be at the conference all week, attending as many panels as I can and participating in special interest group meetings in Animated Media, Experimental Film and Media, and CinemArts: Film and Art History. If you are at SCMS, I hope to see you there and I am looking forward to meeting other scholars from North America and around the world.

March 8, 2013
If you are in Chicago today for the SCMS conference (or if you live in the city) join me at the amazing Cinema Borealis (1550 Milwaukee Ave. N) at 7:00 pm for a great program of experimental animation. "Defining Experimental Animation" is an event I am organizing and running on behalf of the Animated Media Special Interest Group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. For this event we are partnering with Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carre at the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. The lineup includes films by canonical or well-known experimental animators (eg. Oskar Fischinger, Robert Breer, Larry Cuba), but also incredible filmmakers who are often unrecognized for their contributions (eg. Janie Geiser, Daina Krumins, Kathy Rose) or filmmakers who are not often defined as "animators" (eg. Stan Brakhage or Barry Spinello). The screening will be accompanied by a free color booklet of screening notes written by scholars and SCMS members, which I have edited. I am really excited about the event and the booklet, so I hope to see you there! Clich HERE for a larger version of the beautiful poster, which will also be the cover of our booklet.

February 8, 2013
Next month is going to be quite busy with presentations !
On March 2nd I will be presenting my work at the Northwestern University Faculty of Communication symposium. Representatives from different departments have been invited to present their work in front of scholars from different disciplines, and I will be representing the department of Radio/TV/Film.
On March 9th I am chairing a panel on "Animated Movement" at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) 2013 conference. The panel will include my paper on the motif of the "animated line" in early animation training. The full conference program can be found here. On March 8th I am also organizing a special screening of experimental animation at the conference -- details to come.

January 18, 2013
Today I ran a workshop on "Writing the Academic Job Letter" for graduate students in Screen Cultures at Northwestern University. The academic job letter is a writing "genre" that is surrounded by too much mystery and anxiety. I designed this workshop as part of my fellowship at the Graduate Writing Place. The workshop included an overview of the job letter-writing process, concrete strategies for crafting a strong letter, and a Q&A discussion with our department faculty.
The workshop would not have been a success without faculty collaboration, as well as the support of our department alumnae, who generously shared their own sample job letters.

December 12, 2012
Today was the final day of my "Analyzing Media Texts" course at Northwestern University's School of Continuting Studies. This was my first time working with returning and mature students -- it was rewarding to teach in a classroom with such a range of personal experiences, insightful and original comments, and open minded approach to the diverse films we watched.
The course syllabus is available here.

November 8, 2012
Today I ran a workshop on "Writing about Audiovisual and Ephemeral Objects" for graduate students at Northwestern University. This workshop was part of my fellowship at the Graduate Writing Place. My thanks to Elizabeth Lenaghan for helping me facilitate the workshop and to all the graduate students who attended! The workshop included participants from Performance Studies, Anthropology, Art Theory & Practice, Religious Studies, and even Biology (among others). We got great feedback, but I'm looking forward to improving the workshop even more for our Winter Quarter version.

September 12, 2012
Today was my last day of research at the Len Lye Archive, maintained by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand. I was researching the filmmaking methods of animator Len Lye, whose ideas about the role "kinesthetic empathy" in filmmaking practice have been central to the development of many animation techniques. This research trip was funded by the Graduate Ignition Grant from Northwestern University. Much thanks to the lovely gallery staff, in particular archivist-curtaor Paul Brobbel and director Rhana Davenport!