York’s Summer Institute in Film examines the history of cinema and media studies

A decade after the Society for Cinema Studies became the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, reflecting how film scholars were incorporating television, video art, digital media and more into the discipline, York’s 2012 Summer Institute in Film: The Future and the Past of Cinema and Media Studies, June 4 to 7, examines the history of a discipline that has, from its inception, been interdisciplinary.

Featured guest speakers are University of Pittsburgh Professor Lucy Fischer and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Patrice Petro, both former presidents of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Both will participate in a series of four public talks that are part of the 2012 Summer Institute in Film. All talks will take place in the Nat Taylor Cinema, 102 North Ross Building, Keele campus.

Patrice PetroPatrice Petro

Petro is a professor of English, Film Studies and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also serves as vice-provost for international education. Her teaching and research interests include cinema and media history, theory and criticism; modernism and modernity; feminist and critical theory; and internationalism and globalization. As author and editor, her credits include 10 books, among them Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices (2011), Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s (2010), Rethinking Global Security:Media, Popular Culture, and the ‘War on Terror’ (2006), Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age (2003) and Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History (2002). She was president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2007 to 2011.

Lucy FischerLucy Fischer

Fischer is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she directs the Film Studies Program. She is the author of eight books: Jacques Tati (1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema (1989), Imitation of Life (1991), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (1996), Sunrise (1998), Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (2003), Stars: The Film Reader (2004) and American Cinema of the 1920s: Themes and Variations (2009). Forthcoming publications include Teaching Film (2012), a collection of essays co-edited with Patrice Petro, and Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema(2013). She has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. Fisher was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Art Critics Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Professors. She served as president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2001 to 2003 and received its Distinguished Service Award in 2008.

Petro launches the public talks with a presentation titled, “Globalization and Film and Media Studies”, on June 4 from 4 to 6pm in the Nat Taylor Cinema, 102 North Ross Building on York’s Keele campus.

In the the second public talk on June 5 from 4 to 6pm, the speakers come together to discuss Film Studies, Pedagogy and the Academy. Fischer’s portion of this talk is titled, “Memories of Underdevelopment”. Petro’s portion is titled “Organizational Challenges”.

On June 6, from 4 to 6pm, the speakers meet again for the third talk in the series. They will discuss Feminism and Film: Past and Present. Fischer presents “A Formative Decade: 1976-1988” and Petro speaks on  “Beyond Success: After 1989″.

The 2012 Summer Institute concludes with Fischer’s presentation, “Afterimage and Afterlife: Maya Deren in ‘Transfigured Time”.

Now in its fourth year, the annual Summer Institute in Film offers York University graduate students and the wider community the opportunity to engage with prominent international scholars through seminars, courses and free public lectures.