This installment of student voices presents a selection of presentations from the 2019 Society of Cinema and Media Studies Undergraduate Conference held at Muhlenberg College in April. Each paper engages with an aspect of media and space place, with embodied difference and the politics of place-making as key common themes.
Introduction (June 23, 2019)
Amy Corbin contextualizes the essays in the work of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’s undergraduate conference, which she co-organized. She also provides a platform for Jeffery Lin, an invited contributor, to discuss the ongoing protests on Hong Kong and his reasons for withdrawing his essay.
Getting Lost in “Wondaland”: Political Worldbuilding and Timeless Affects in Janelle Monáe’s Metropolis (June 26, 2019)
Mathilde Fauteux explores the political spaces of Janelle Monáe’s work, concentrating on both the diegetic spaces that make up her recent projects and the transmedia spaces those projects occupy and create.
Worlds Under Watch: The Moving Surveillance-Image and Its Institutions (June 26, 2019)
Cedric Bobro traces the linguistics roots of surveillance and the fantasy of the omnipotent view through ghosts and AI to the modern surveillance apparatus.
An Archive of Shirkers (2018): Collaging Different Theories of the Archive (June 29, 2019)
David Chan brings several theories of the archive to bear on the recent documentary Shirkers, asking how the film’s openness as a text and mission of collecting a lost film relate to the specificities of place and embodied difference that gave rise to the project.
“It Takes a Village…”: The Use of Childhood to Negotiate Questions of Migration and European Identity in Le Havre (June 29, 2019)
Anushka Robinson explores Aki Kaurismäki’s take on migration, Fortress Europe, northern France, and community ties through theories of childhood and affiliation.