Haidee Wasson, PhD

Education

Dr. Wasson was recently named a Distinguished Research Professor (2023) in recognition of her multiple international awards, and her ground-breaking and influential scholarship. She has published 5 books, with an additional one in production, and dozens of articles, lecturing internationally on film and media history. She is currently working on a 5-year SSHRC funded project examining the important role of small format film technologies in seeding cultures of creativity across cultural and industrial sectors.

She previously taught in the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature Department, University of Minnesota and in the Visual and Environmental Studies Program, Harvard University.

Research interests

Books:

Sixteen at 100: Towards a History of a Radical Film Format (co-edited with Greg Waller) (Oxford University Press, in production)

Everyday Movies: Portable Projectors and the Transformation of American Film Culture (University of California, 2021). 274 pp. (Winner of the Katherine Singer Kovacs "Best Book" Award, Society of Cinema and Media Studies; Finalist for Best Moving Image Book Award, Krasna-Krausz Book Awards)

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 379pp.

Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr. Charles Acland [Duke University Press, 2011] 386 pp. [Best Edited Collection – SCMS – honorable mention; Krasna-Krausz Book Awards 2012 – Finalist for Best Moving Image Book Award.]

Inventing Film Studies: A Genealogy of Studying Cinema (co-edited with Dr. Lee Grieveson) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) 446 pp.     

Museum Movies: MoMA and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) 314 pp. *Outstanding Academic Title 2005 (American Library Association)

Chapters in Books (select):

“Cinema and Industrial Design: New Media Ecologies and the Exhibition Film” in Films that Work Harder. Vinzenz Hediger, Florian Hoof, and Yvonne Zimmerman (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2024).

“The Military and American Cinema” [with Lee Grieveson] in Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 1-24.

“Experimental Viewing Protocols: Film Projection and the American Military,” Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 25-43.

“Verstärktes Licht und Moduliertes Sehen: Kinogeschichten vom Experimentieren mit  kleinen Bildschirmen” [Amplified Light and Modulated Looking: Cinema Histories of Small Screen Experimentation] in Oberflachen und Interfaces: Asthetik und Politik filmischer [Surfaces and Interfaces: Aesthetics and Politics of Filmic Images ed Ute Holl et al. (Munich: Finkverlag, 2017) [7,700 words]

“Researching Film Formats: The Quick Search and Slow Scholarship” for The ARCLIGHT Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities (Reframe Books: 2016) (www.projectarclight.org)

“Selling Machines: Portable Projectors and Advertising at the World’s Fair” in Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising eds. Nico De Klerk, Bo Florin, and Patrick Vonderau, eds (BFI, 2016) 54-70.

“The Elastic Museum” TheInternational Handbook of Museum Studies: Museum Media First Edition. Edited by Michelle Henning, (Wiley& Sons, 2015) 603-627.

"Big, Fast Museums / Small, Slow Movies: Film, Scale and the Art Museum" in Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr. Charles Acland (Duke University Press, 2011) 178-204. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977436/

Articles (select):

*“Introduction: 16mm Film in Canada” (co-written with Liz Czach) Canadian Journal of Film Studies 31.2 (Fall 2022) (1-4).

*“A Century in 16mm” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62.2 (Winter 2023) 1-5.

*“Documentary’s Exhibitionary Complex: Cinema, Industrial Design and Corporate Dreamworlds” Imago Vol VIII, no 1 (2017)

*”Entering the Movie Theater” [introduction to special issue on movie theaters] Film History: An International Journal. Vol 28, No 2 (2016) pp. v-xi.

“Verkaufsmaschinen. Film und filmische Techniken auf der New Yorker Weltausstellung 

1939/1940” Montage A/V (02/2015) 161-178. Trans. “Selling Machines: Portable Projectors and Advertising at the World’s Fair” in Nico De Klerk, Bo Florin, and Patrick Vonderau, eds. Films that Sell (BFI, 2016) 54-70.

“Formatting Film Studies” Film Studies 12 (Spring2015) 57 – 61.

 “Verkaufsmaschinen. Film und filmischeTechniken auf der New Yorker Weltausstellung 1939/1940” Montage A/V (02/2015)161-178.

“The Protocols of Portability” Film History vol. 25, No. 1-2 (2013): 236-247.

“Moving Images: Portable Histories of Film Exhibition” The International Encyclopedia of MediaStudies: Media History and the Foundations of Media Studies. John Nerone,ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) 367-384.

“Suitcase Cinema” Cinema Journal (51.2) Winter 2012: 150-154.

"Introduction" [In Focus: Screen Technologies] Cinema Journal 51.2 (Winter 2012): 143-146. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977433/

Books

Cinema’s MilitaryIndustrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2018) 379pp.

Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr.Charles Acland [Duke University Press, 2011] 386 pp. [Best Edited Collection –SCMS – honorable mention; Krasna-Krausz Book Awards 2012 – Finalist for BestMoving Image Book Award.]

Inventing Film Studies: A Genealogy of StudyingCinema (co-edited withDr. Lee Grieveson) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) 446 pp.               

Museum Movies: MoMA and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2005) 314 pp. *Outstanding Academic Title 2005 (AmericanLibrary Association)