[Commlist] Online Publication – Teaching Nontheatrical and Useful Media

*Teaching Nontheatrical and Useful Media*

JCMS Online Dossier, edited by (Brown University), Joseph Clark (Simon 
Fraser University) und Tanya Goldman (New York University), and Sophia 
Gräfe (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
with contributions by Marie Sophie Beckmann, Philipp Dominik Keidl, 
Rebecca Puchta, Philipp Röding, Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, Danny Tayara, 
and Charles Tepperman.

"Teaching today has turned all instructors into nontheatrical and useful 
media makers. As the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed instruction online, 
teaching has become an exercise in media production, with instructors 
and staff filming, editing, and distributing moving images in advance or 
streaming them live. These new developments in mediated pedagogy—or 
rather the radical acceleration of recent trends toward online 
teaching—demand critical reflection from educators across the entire 
academy, and from media scholars in particular. The burgeoning 
scholarship on nontheatrical and useful media provides special insight 
into the use of moving images in the classroom, and teaching these 
subjects—at all levels of the curriculum—offers students and instructors 
the opportunity to reflect on our own uses of media technology today.

In recent decades, an increasing number of scholars have turned their 
attention to the study of “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.”[1] The 
scholarship on these media forms and their frequently “nontheatrical” 
viewing spaces charts alternative geographies of media experience, 
mapping an expansive and diverse network of production practices, 
exhibition contexts, and reception sites.

This teaching dossier argues for the inclusion of the histories of 
nontheatrical and useful media in the classroom and beyond, as well as 
for the methodological possibilities of studying and teaching these 
media forms (…)"

Contents:

Editors' Introduction
Hongwei Thorn Chen, Joseph Clark, Tanya Goldman, and Sophia Gräfe

Toward an Eclectic Film History Survey
Tanya Goldman (New York University)

Film Studies on the Go: "Pacing" as a Method for an Embodied Study of 
Useful Film
Marie Sophie Beckmann, Rebecca Puchta, and Philipp Röding (Goethe 
University)

Useful Cinema and Its Institutional Contexts: Archival Finding Aid 
Research Assignments
Philipp Dominik Keidl (Goethe University)

Taking a Turn on the Rewind: Strategies for Experiential Learning in 
Nontheatrical Film History
Charles Tepperman (University of Calgary)

Things to Come: Teaching Film Studies for Our Scientific Future
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa and Danny Tayara (Seattle University)

Mapping the Nontheatrical Field: A Useful Teaching Bibliography
Hongwei Thorn Chen (Tulane University) and Sophia Gräfe 
(Philipps-Universität Marburg)

Link: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/teachingmedia 
<https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/teachingmedia>
"Teaching Media" is dedicated to sharing ideas and resources for 
pedagogical practices. JCMS Teaching Dossier journal publishes short 
essays on pedagogical topics in film and media studies.


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