The third of our network symposia took place online on Friday 8 March. We are pleased to share the recording of the event below.
The topic of this symposium was the ‘circulations’ of film theory. Like the themes of the first and second network symposia, on the ‘sites’ and ‘practices’ of film theory, the ‘circulations’ of film theory opens out to myriad ways in which discourses about film are set in motion and continue to circulate. Circulations of people, films, texts, and technologies facilitate such movement in the history and geography of ideas, intersecting in complex ways with histories of film distribution and exhibition, as well as with the migration and exile of people, to name but some of the diverse ways in which we might think about means and modes of circulation. Three short texts were circulated in advance:
Edward Said, ‘Traveling Theory,’ in The World, the Text, the Critic (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 226-247
James Clifford, ‘Notes on Travel and Theory,’ https://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/inscriptions/volume-5/james-clifford/
Victor Fan, ‘Introduction’ to Cinema Approaching Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), pp. 1-15
Programme:
2-2.30pm: Welcome
Session 1: 2.30-3.50pm:
Chair: Sarah Cooper
Presentations followed by discussion:
Emma Widdis (Trinity College, Cambridge):‘Theorising spectatorship in the early Soviet Union’
Network guest Dina Iordanova (Emeritus Professor, St Andrews): ‘‘Sole Traders’ and Circulation’
Masha Salazkina (Concordia): ‘Romancing Yesenia: Transnational Circulations of Theory and Melodrama’
Session 2: 4-5.30pm:
Chair: Aboubakar Sanogo
Presentations followed by discussion:
Victor Fan (King’s College London): ‘Circulations of Asian and European Film Theory in Cinema Approaching Reality’
Network guest Yizhou Tian (Nankai University and UKCHA Fellow): ‘The Translation and Circulation of Film Theory in 1930s China’
Erica Carter (King’s College London): ‘Blocked Circulations, Archival Interventions’
Recordings