[Commlist] CFP: Seeking Proposals for Dossier on Teaching with Nontheatrical and Useful Media

Several colleagues are planning to submit a Teaching Dossier on 
Nontheatrical and Useful Media for consideration for the Journal of 
Cinema and Media Studies’ (formerly Cinema Journal) Teaching Media 
website this fall. We hope to engage instructors from a wide range of 
disciplines. Here are the proposal details. Please share widely.



CFP for Consideration for Teaching Dossier of the Journal of Cinema and 
Media Studies (JCMS)
Theme: “Teaching Non-Theatrical and Useful Media”


Editors: Tanya Goldman (New York University) Hongwei Chen (Tulane 
University)
Joseph Clark (Simon Fraser University)
Sophia Graefe (Philipps University Marburg)
 We invite submissions for an upcoming proposal for consideration by 
the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies’ Teaching Dossier editorial 
board. The JCMS Teaching Dossier is an online feature found at 
teachingmedia.org. The site offers media scholars a venue to share 
pedagogical resources and discuss undergraduate teaching on a wide range 
of topics.

In recent decades, an increasing number of scholars have turned their 
attention to the study of so-called “useful media” – educational and 
training films, industrials, newsreels, travelogues, home movies, and 
more. As Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson point out, these media are 
characterized less by their artistic and entertainment goals than by 
their “ability to transform unlikely spaces, convey ideas, convince 
individuals, and produce subjects in the service of public and private 
aims” (Useful Cinema, 2011).
 The scholarship on these media forms and their frequently 
“non-theatrical” viewing spaces charts alternative geographies of film 
experience, mapping an expansive and diverse network of production 
practices, exhibition contexts, and reception sites. By complicating the 
narrative of cinema as a single institution and repositioning film, 
video, and television at the intersection of a multiplicity of everyday 
uses and institutional functions, the study of non-theatrical film and 
useful media also poses new challenges and opportunities for research 
and pedagogy.  As the discipline of cinema and media studies continues 
to expand and evolve, how might instructors refine their courses to 
expose students to a more eclectic range of moving image forms and 
experiences? In what ways might attention to non-theatrical film and 
useful media in the classroom change the analytical skills we teach and 
the historical and theoretical questions we ask? How, for example, do we 
teach formal analysis for films that are not meant to be freestanding 
texts but rather, as Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau write, 
“interfaces between discourses and forms of social and industrial 
organization” (Films That Work, 2009)? How might we envision curricular 
principles for surveying the gamut of commissioned, amateur, and 
institutional films, most of which do not fit into existing film 
historical narratives? Moreover, how do we align our teaching with 
recent archival prerogatives aimed at preserving and digitally 
disseminating ephemeral and orphan works? This dossier aims to offer 
case studies and reflections on how instructors can integrate these 
often neglected works into survey or special topic courses.
We welcome contributions from scholars, teachers, and archivists from a 
wide-range of disciplines and levels of experience (including 
non-tenured instructors) and seek those utilizing multiple and 
transdisciplinary angles that draw from a wide range of disciplines 
related to film and media studies including anthropology, sociology, 
history, science and technology studies, education, gender studies, 
ethnic studies, etc.

Areas of interest include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:
●	Incorporating non-theatrical media into existing courses, including 
introductions to film and media, survey courses in national and global 
cinemas, documentary studies, etc.
●	Reframing audience and reception studies using histories of 
non-theatrical exhibition
●	Studying racialized and other historically marginalized media cultures 
through useful and non-theatrical media
●	Reevaluating auteurism through useful media
●	Useful cinema as a case study in archival studies
●	Considering new examples of useful media in the digital age
●	Teaching media production with attention to useful cinema
●	Adding media ethnography, visual anthropology, or other forms of 
moving images more commonly used in disciplines outside cinema and media 
studies
  Please submit a brief abstract and title (~250-400 words) and short 
bio including teaching experience (~150 words) to (tanyagoldman /at/ nyu.edu) 
by September 15, 2019. Decisions from the editors will be sent out by 
mid-October. The full proposal will then be sent to the JCMS Teaching 
Dossier editorial team for consideration and feedback. If accepted by 
JCMS, we will aim to have final essays (~1,750 words) by January 31, 2020.

Before submitting your proposal, we encourage you to familiarize 
yourself with previous dossiers:
http://www.teachingmedia.org/cinema-journal-teaching-dossier/

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