What is the future of screened history? Shaping citizenship, sociopaths and the past

Opening Plenary Panel – 2018 History & Film Conference

For more information on this panel and the papers presented, please email me.

Original information for event:

Robert A. Rosenstone

Professor Emeritus of History at the California Institute of Technology, Robert is a leading figure in the study of film and history. Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995) and Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Edited Collection, 1995) were highly influential in the field, and his contributions have continued with History on Film / Film on History (3^rd Edition, 2017). Robert has written several works of narrative history, as well as two works of imaginative writing and a historical novel. His innovative memoir Adventures of a Postmodern Historian, was published in 2016.  He has participated in the production of several films, both dramatic features and documentaries. His award-winning biography of John Reed, Romantic Revolutionary (1975) was the basis for the Academy Award winning Reds. Other film involvement includes writing the narration for the documentary The Good Fight (1983), and time spent as consultant and/or Talking Head for several films, including Darrow and Tango of Slaves. W: http://rosenstone.com/

Note: due to unavoidable circumstances, Robert is unable to join us in person. He has pre-recorded a conversation with Mia and Kim, which will be screened at the start of the panel.

Robert Burgoyne

Robert Burgoyne is Honorary Professor in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, and Senior Research Fellow at Cinepoetics: Center for Advanced Film Studies in Berlin.  His work centers on historiography and film, with emphasis on American cinema and national identity. Publications include Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U. S. History (revised edition, 2010), The Epic Film in World Culture (2011), and The Hollywood Historical Film (2008).  He has also published on memory and contemporary American culture; cinephilia in the work of Douglas Gordon and Corey Arcangel; and the imagery of haunting and spectrality in the war film. His recent work investigates the cinematic rewriting of history, and film’s power to illuminate the present by reconceiving dominant fictions that have formed around the past.

Alison Landsberg

Alison is Professor of History and Cultural Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (2004) considers the ways in which individuals are increasingly able to take on memories of events they did not live through and explores the potential of such memories to produce empathy and to become the grounds for progressive politics. Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (2015), explores the ways in which popular representations of the past, even as they engage their viewers affectively, might foster historical thinking, forcing a reconsideration of what constitutes history, and of how history works, in the contemporary mediated public sphere. She is currently working on a project called “Post Postracial America,” which examines the contemporary eruption of discourse about race on both the political left and right, and its expression in mass culture. W: https://historyarthistory.gmu.edu/people/alandsb1

Kim Nelson

Kim is the Director, The Humanities Research Group and an Associate Professor in the School of Creative Arts at University of Windsor. Her work spans fiction and documentary and has screened at international festivals and campuses, and with Link TV/KCET online. She has held fellowships with DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) in Germany, 2012-13, and the Humanities Research Group at the University of Windsor, 2013-14 and New York University’s Cinema Research Institute at the Tisch School of the Arts 2015-16. She was awarded the 2014 Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity at the University of Windsor Her live documentary, the 130-year Road Trip, was the keynote event for the 2017 History and Film conference. W: http://thekimnelson.com/

Mia E. M. Treacey

Mia is a researcher, academic and screened historian, living in Melbourne, Australia. She completed her PhD at Monash University and now teaches in the fields of history, film & television studies, and screened history. She is currently working at Monash University in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, and the School of Media, Film and Journalism. Reframing the Past: history, film and television (2016) traces what historians have written about film and television from 1898 until the early 2000s, arguing that historical engagement with film and television should be reconceptualised as Screened History: an interdisciplinary, international field of research to incorporate and replace what has been known as ‘History and Film’. As well as teaching, she is currently working on a new multimedia project on Screened History. W: https://screenedhistory.com/

Novotny Lawrence – panel moderator

Novotny earned his Ph.D. in 2004 from the Theatre and Film Department (now Department of Cinema and Media Studies) at the University of Kansas.  Previously an Associate Professor in the Radio, Television, and Digital Media Department at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, he taught courses such as Media and Society, Film History and Analysis, Race and the Media, and History of African American Images in Film.  In 2018, he joined the faculty in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University where he continues to instruct courses focusing on media, race, and representation.  Dr Lawrence’s research centers on African American mediated experiences and popular culture.  He is the author of Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (2007), the editor of Documenting the Black Experience (2014), and the co-editor of Beyond Blaxploitation (2016).  Dr Lawrence has also published journal articles and book chapters on The Jeffersons, The Twilight Zone, Dave Chappelle, and C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. Dr Lawrence currently serves on the Governing Board of the Popular Culture Association and he is the Chair of the Race and Ethnicity area of the Film and History Conference.

Audience Q & A

There will be the opportunity for audience members to ask questions of the panel members during this event.