Inventing Film Studies

Lee Grieveson is Reader in Film Studies and Director of the Graduate Programme in Film Studies at University College London. He is the author of Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America and a co-editor of The Silent Cinema Reader.Haidee Wasson is Associate Professor of Cinema at Concordia University. She is the author of Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema.

“This collection contributes new understandings to the history of film studies, particularly regarding the discipline’s development in the humanities and its gradual abandonment of the methodological practices of the social sciences, in which it had its origins. Inventing Film Studies will be welcomed by academics working in cinema studies, and it will provide new entrants to the field with an important introduction to the history of their study.”-Richard Maltby, author of Hollywood Cinema “This is the best film book that I’ve read in years. It covers the history of film studies, certainly the least historicized discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Contributors show that the field dates at least to the early twentieth century and that it can be traced through a number of institutions: not just the academy but also government, the museum, and the publishing industry, to name just three. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson have produced a book that will change the way film scholars think about their field.”-Eric Smoodin, co-editor of Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method

• Acknowledgments ixThe Academy and Motion Pictures / Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson xiMaking Cinema Knowable Cinema Studies and the Conduct of Conduct / Lee Grieveson 3Taking Liberties: The Payne Fund Studies and the Creation of the Media Expert / Mark Lynn Anderson 38"Reaching the Multimillions": Liberal Internationalism and the Establishment of Documentary Film / Zoe Druick 66Young Art, Old Colleges: Early Episodes in the American Study of Film / Dana Polan 93Making Cinema Educational Studying Movies at the Museum: The Museum of Modern Art and Cinema's Changing Object / Haidee Wasson 121Classrooms, Clubs, and Community Circuits: Cultural Authority and the Film Council Movement, 1946-1957 / Charles R. Acland 149Experimental Film and the Development of Film Study in America / Michael Zryd 182From Cinephilia to Film Studies / Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen 217Making Cinema Legible Experimentation and Innovation in Three American Film Journals of the 1950s / Haden Guest 235Screen and 1970s Film Theory / Philip Rosen 264(Re)Inventing Camera Obscura / Amelia Hastie, Lynne Joyrich, Patricia White, and Sharon Willis 298Little Books / Mark Betz 319Making and Remaking Cinema Studies Footstool Film School: Home Entertainment as Home Education / Alison Trope 353Dr. Strange Media, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Film Theory / D. N. Rodowick 374Appendix Timeline for a History of Anglophone Film Culture and Film Studies / Stephen Groening 399Selected Bibliography 419About the Contributors 425Index 429