Aca-Media

Kicking of the fall semester, we present the first in a three part series with media scholars in conversations addressing the current election season—beginning with Chuck Tryon, author of the new book “Political TV.” In addition, we are featuring an excerpt of the excellent SCMS Fieldnotes interview with Constance Penley by Elena Gorfinkel. Visit the website for full show notes!: http://www.aca-media.org/episode32

We’re back with an extended summer episode courtesy of the SCMS Sound Studies Scholarly Interest Group (SIG). Produced by Tim Anderson, the episode features excellent segments with Jeremy Morris on music formats, metadata and tagging; Brian Fauteux on Canadian college radio; Joan Titus on Shostakovich and musicology; and Nina Cartier on Blaxploitation soundtracks. Enjoy your summer!

Just wrapping up the spring semester, this new episode features a report from the Academy Film Archives featuring interviews with the archive’s director Michael Pogorzelski, preservation officer Joe Lindner, and public access coordinator May Haduong. In addition, we present an interview with Nicholas Mirzoeff, speaking on his new book “How to See the World,” as well as scholarly and activist projects concerning Black Lives Matter, visual culture, and theorizations of the anthropocene. Hope you are having a great start to the summer!

A special Aca-Media short report! The non-academic talk of #SCMS16 has been the furry convention at the hotel next door, so Chris went along with a handful of fan studies scholars to check it out.

Our pre-SCMS Atlanta episode includes a detailed report from the Radio Preservation Task Force Conference, featuring interviews with Josh Shepperd, Sonja Williams, Gerald Seligman, and Wendy Shay. In addition, we present a segment on the history and legacy of the SCMS Latino/a Caucus, from Luisela Alvaray, Laura Isabel Serna, and Rielle Navitski, featuring interviews with Margarita De La Vega-Hurtado and Charles Ramírez Berg. See you in Atlanta for SCMS 2016!

Following last episode’s segment on graduate student-run journals, we present a segment on the undergraduate journal Film Matters, featuring co-editor-in-chief Tim Palmer of University of North Carolina Wilmington, guest editor-in-chief Gregory Chan of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and editorial board members Jen Pintao and Kailyn Warpole. In addition, we feature an excerpt of the SCMS Fieldnotes interview with Tom Gunning of University of Chicago, discussing a wide range of topics with Scott Curtis of Northwestern University after receiving the Distinguished Career Award at SCMS 2015.

Our Cinema Journal Presents segment features Jun Okada, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at SUNY Geneseo discussing her new book Making Asian American Film and Video: History, Institutions, Movements, as well as ongoing research. In addition, we’ve put together a segment on graduate student-run journals, including interviews with editors of InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture (featuring Victoria Gao, of the University of Rochester), as well as The Velvet Light Trap (featuring Caroline Leader and Derek Long of the University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Colleen Montgomery and Michael O'Brien of the University of Texas at Austin). Next month’s episode will continue this series, exploring more great student journals. Also, Chris gathers comments from fellow participants in a workshop on Television History, the Peabody Archives, and Cultural Memory at the Peabody Awards Archives at the University of Georgia.

Drama! Tension! Melodrama! Horror!  This episode will put you through the emotional wringer, it will give you the feels, it will help you understand both cannibals and Cubs fans.  No preview can do it justice:  you'll just have to listen.  With Vicky Johnson, Lisa Schmidt, and "Very Special Guest Star" Elana Levine.

Fall is here and the semester has begun. Michael and Chris share some teaching tips, and we'd like to hear your teaching tips too: email us at info@aca-media.org. Our Cinema Journal Presents segment features Debra Ramsay discussing war-based video games like Call of Duty. Then we bring you another Fieldnotes interview, this time with film scholar James Naremore, expert on Welles and Hitchcock. Finally, we reveal the winner of our book giveaway and issue a call for more folks to help out with the Aca-Media podcast. Please email us at info@aca-media.org if you'd like to be part of the production team.

It's an exciting, exciting episode of Aca-Media to help you while away the dog days of summer. First up: Kristen Warner talks about "colorblind casting" and waxes eloquent about her love for Magic Mike XXL. Bonus: We're giving away a copy of Kristen's new book to a lucky graduate student; to enter, email your idea for a segment of Aca-Media to info@aca-media.org. Then we bring you another Fieldnotes interview excerpt, this time with distinguished German film critic and scholar Gertrud Koch. Finally, Michael and Chris talk about what television programs are keeping them out of the summer heat.

Michael and Chris are back from Dublin, and we have lots of great content for your summer listening pleasure.  First, Bill interviews Jill Simpson, Executive Director of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, about her background and plans for the society. Chris talks with Jennifer Proctor about he [in]Transition video essay on textuality in film. Finally, we have a Vox Scholari segment of summer viewing recommendations.

It's been a while, but we're back with some good stuff!  First, Austin Fisher discusses his video essay from [in]Transition, responding to Michelle Cho’s CJ article on spaghetti westerns. Then we air a tribute to distinguished media scholar Michele Hilmes, produced by Andrew Bottomley and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin.  Finally, Michael and Chris lament the latest political developments in higher education. 

This episode features lots of great content to get you through your flight to Montreal. First we talk with Jon Lewis about his classic Cinema Journal article from 2000 about “How the Blacklist Saved Hollywood." Then media policy scholar Danny Kimball fills us in on the FCC's big network neutrality decision. Finally, after the most implausible segue in recorded human history, Casey McCormick and Eric Powell give you an invaluable guide to Montreal for the upcoming SCMS conference; check out their interactive map at http://bit.ly/1FeZgMg.

Don't fear the numbers! In a fascinating (and funny) interview, we talk to Jeremy Butler about how he uses quantitative analysis and digital tools to better understand film and television style. Then we continue bringing you interviews with great film and media scholars from the folks at Fieldnotes: this month Thomas Waugh talks with Linda Williams about Jump Cut, the pornography wars of the 1980s, and her more recent work on race and melodrama.

This month we bring you the great film scholar Thomas Elsaesser as part of our collaboration with the new Fieldnotes project. Fieldnotes is conducting oral histories with notable media scholars, so look for more great interviews in coming episodes, and listen to the full interviews at the SCMS website (http://www.cmstudies.org/?page=fieldnotes). We also have a fascinating conversation with Rielle Navitski about researching Latin American film history, based on her contribution to a recent “In Focus” section of Cinema Journal on the subject. And if that weren't enough, we're giving away a NEW CAR! All you have to do is be one of the first fifty to take the Aca-Media survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WJS89V6). Fair warning: Michael has not yet told us what kind of car he has in mind for us to give away. But please take the survey anyway.