“Nowhere else is film thought about so deeply and rigorously as at the University of Chicago, and nowhere else does film studies occupy such a central position amidst older disciplines,” says Robert Bird, interim chair of Cinema and Media Studies. Three new faculty members joined the department this fall—read their biographies here.

 

Jacqueline Stewart, who returns to teaching at UChicago from Northwestern, is excited about the resources afforded by the Film Studies Center and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and looks forward to collaborating with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and the Arts + Public Life initiative on “projects that engage students, colleagues and community.” The interdisciplinary, even populist, nature of the field is what drew Daniel Morgan to study it in the first place: “My interest in film studies emerged out of two deep passions: going to and thinking and talking about movies, and an intellectual investment in philosophy.” His new colleague D. N. Rodowick is eager to explore “how contemporary media and installation art works with questions about film history” while continuing his recently resurrected practice as an experimental filmmaker. “I used to teach art making,” he explains, “so I wouldn’t mind folding that back into my teaching portfolio.” 

 

“This year UChicago swept many of the prizes awarded at the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, which is to say the department was already very strong,” says James Chandler, AM’72, PhD’78, who is on leave as chair for 2013–14. After adding this new group of scholars, he says, “there is no limit to what is possible for us.”