At the recent Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2022 Awards ceremony this June, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema Professor Haidee Wasson was given the prestigious Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award by the international Society for Cinema and Media Studies for her book Everyday Movies: Portable Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture (UC Press, 2021).
While Everyday Movies has received an enthusiastic response from Wasson’s peers since its publication last year, this award is definitely not an everyday honour for any film or media studies professor.
The SCMS represents nearly 3000 film, television, and media scholars from 38 countries, and the Katherine Singer Kovács award is recognized as the highest honor in this field.
“This is the most prestigious and hard-to-get award in our field,” says Wasson’s colleague, Professor Marc Steinberg. “It’s hard to overstate what a coup this is for Haidee, as it shows field-wide recognition of her incredibly well-researched and groundbreaking Everyday Movies. It’s also great news for Concordia, shining a bright light on the successes of Film and Moving Image studies faculty research.”
The fact that Wasson’s student Kyla Smith also secured an SCMS student writing award this year shows that Haidee is not just a brilliant researcher, she is also an incredible mentor for emerging scholars, adds Steinberg.
Cover of Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture, University of California Press
Publicity photo, 1947. Haberich-Blessing Studio, Victor Animatograph Records, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa