The scholarly side of Minecraft, Bollywood and professional wrestling
Close-up from the poster for 1965 Bollywood film The Guide found at Chor Bazaar in Mumbai. | Photo by Meena Kadri (Flickr Creative Commons)
Professors and academics from six different departments across two faculties at Concordia are joining thousands of film, media and communications scholars to discuss everything from the power dynamics of fandom, to queer media, to Alfred Hitchcock’s special effects at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) annual conference, taking place in Montreal from March 25 to 29.
Dedicated to the scholarly study of the moving image, the SCMS, represents 3,000 scholars from more than 500 institutions in 38 nations. Its annual interdisciplinary conference brings together experts from universities across North America, Europe, and as far away as New Zealand to present an ambitious array of research.
Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Faculty of Arts and Science, and the Offices of the Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies are sponsoring this year’s event, taking place at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Haidee Wasson, an associate professor in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, is the host committee chair.
“With 55 faculty members and graduate students presenting research, our participation at this year’s conference is a testimony to Concordia’s research strengths in film, media and communication studies,” Wasson says.
The research being presented by Concordia’s scholars is as diverse as the disciplines represented — international cinema and pop culture, gaming and digital technologies, politics, gender and the environment.
“Our fields of study are constantly expanding in interesting ways and categories are being challenged as new technology and applications emerge,” says Wasson.
Just last year, Concordia awarded degrees to its first PhD students in Film Studies. One of the graduates, Dru Jeffries, now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, will be chairing a panel discussion on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) at the SCMS Conference. Read more about the graduate students presenting at the SCMS annual conference.
Concordia and the National Film Board (NFB) will co-host a celebration of the filmmaker Norman McLaren on Saturday, March 28, 2015, between 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in the Alumni Auditorium (H-110), located on the ground floor of the Henry F. Hall Building, 1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Room H-110.