Aca-Media

How are old and new technologies impacting TV production, textuality, and reception? What possibilities are emerging, and what might be closing down? How does this impact media industries and/or media audiences? How do discourses of technology overlap and interact with discourses around the pandemic as well as the protests, and what might we make of that? In other words, how does the idea of “vira...

What are the primary affects around and through TV consumption? How has the pandemic (and the protests following the murder of George Floyd) affected the ways in which we consume and critique television? What are our embodied viewing experiences as audiences trapped at home, and how might these experiences speak to new ways of perceiving and understanding TV? What can we learn from existing fan cu...

What are the relations between televisual politics and aesthetics, identity and representation, communication and critique? How has the pandemic renewed interest in conversations around TV’s modes of address and how viewers make meaning from particular kinds of programming content? At a time when fraught politics are, one might say, on the very surface of texts today, how should we best deploy and...

In this episode, we discuss television and epistemology in a global pandemic: How do we know TV and how do we know through TV? What are the implications of people tuning in more and more to TV to attempt to gain knowledge (and cope with that knowledge) of the pandemic? What sorts of knowledges (or ignorances) might emerge, in various ways, from various genres on TV—not only news/documentary/public...

The start of something(s) new! Aca-Media continues remote broadcasting and introduces two new series for your listening – and streaming? – pleasure. First is a sneak peek of “Talking Television in a Pandemic,” a new series launching right here on Aca-Media, where television scholars Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton discuss what it means to watch TV during the pandemic. Touch...

SCMS is cancelled but the content rolls on! This episode of Aca-Media brings you a fascinating interview with Paul Taberham about animation and the avant-garde, including some great tips for teaching difficult media. Then Ryn Marchese discusses the amazing work being done at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Finally, Chris and Michael banter about how they are spending their self-isolat...

In the depths of winter, we take you to warm, sunny Italy! Our intrepid host Chris Becker, apparently unsure how to order “pizza” in Italian, nonetheless bravely heads to Matera in order to talk with documentarians Chiara Ferrari and Quinn Winchell about cultural tourism in Matera (the setting for films from James Bond to Passion of the Christ). We then re-air the 2014 Fieldnotes segment with infl...

We move into fall with two fantastic interviews for you. First, Elizabeth Ellcessor talks with Margaret Price about disability and accessibility in academia, paying special attention to academic careers and the experiences of disabled faculty. We then talk with Catherine Grant in order to revisit the launch of [in]Transition five years on, discussing the state of videographic criticism as well as...

Aca-Media is turning 50! For our fiftieth episode, we talk with past SCMS president Pam Wojcik about the past and future of the organization. Then we bring you an interview with Usha Iyer about Bollywood, screen dance studies, “unwarping the non-western,” and much, much more—it’s a fascinating and wide-ranging interview. Finally, Chris and Michael banter about Chris’ class on “The Good Place” and...

Both segments featured in this episode reference “how the sausage gets made,” so prepare to learn a lot. We first hear from Juan Llamas-Rodriguez about how a seminar paper becomes a Journal of Cinema and Media Studies article, as well as how the Mexico-based theater chain Cinépolis has spread a luxury cinema model around the globe. Then Nedda Ahmed and Chris Cagle talk with Joel Neville Anderson a...

Chris and Michael flash back to SCMS Seattle, where a group of scholars sat down to talk about TV’s global future and conferencegoers crossed paths with Emerald City Comic-Con. First up, a roundtable featuring Derek Kompare, Catherine Johnson, Petr Szczepanik, Bärbel Goebel Stolz, and Liz Evans chatting about online streaming and how it might affect commercial and public service broadcasting as te...

Chris has relearned how to sleep, and she’s back behind the Aca-Media mic. She and Michael bring you interviews with Alfred Martin and Michael Newman, members of the SCMS Katherine Singer Kovács Essay and Book Award committees respectively, as well as the inspiring backstory of the awards’ namesake. Then we head back in time to just before the 2014 SCMS conference, when we told you all about thing...

Aca-Media is back to ring in 2019! Join our hosts Michael Kackman and guest host Stephanie Brown as they explore what it means to build and nurture communities inside and outside academia. We first talk with scholar/filmmaker/activist/all-around legend B. Ruby Rich from UC-Santa Cruz about her illustrious career, representation and diversity in academia and industry, Film Quarterly and cross-cultu...

As fall semesters kick off, we’re back with the second part of Producer Stephanie Brown’s two-part series on job searching in this precarious academic job market! Stephanie takes us back into a multi-layered conversation with the job seekers, adjuncts, and search-committee members from the last episode as well as some new faces. After a montage of concrete advice for job seekers and search-committ...

Share this one with everyone you know who is on the academic job market! We present the first of a two-part series on job searches, with advice and empathy from those who are currently contending with the vagaries of the market. Producer Stephanie Brown talks with job seekers, adjuncts, and search-committee members in order to gain insight into the often frustrating process of gaining academic emp...

Aca-Media presents a Very Special Episode, albeit one without an easy, “feel-good” ending. The topic is precarity in academia. We bring you three segments: a roundtable (with Jamie Rogers, Jennifer Hyland Wang, and Bruce Brasell) on contingent and precarious academic labor (and what SCMS might do about it), an interview with Alex Russo on the turmoil at Catholic University, and a report from Brett...

As spring zooms along as a semester and lags behind as a season, we bring you a new episode of Aca-Media with two segments that speak to our current times. First, we present different reflections on and strategies for “Teaching in Trump Times,” composed of submissions from educators across cinema and media studies, representing diverse contexts and experiences in the field. Second, from Fieldnotes...

There's a new editor at Cinema Journ-- um, we mean, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Chris talks with Caetlin Benson-Allott about her plans for the next five years and what SCMS members can expect from the journal formally known as CJ. Then Alisa Perren and Charlotte E. Howell converse about their relationship as advisor and advisee, providing insights into what makes for a great mentoring...

In our final episode of 2017, we feature an interview with outgoing Cinema Journal editor Will Brooker addressing the past and future of the Society for Cinema Studies’ journal. In addition, we feature an interview with Maggie Hennefeld on her work as co-chair of the Comedy and Humor Studies Scholarly Interest Group (SIG) and her upcoming book Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.  

In this episode of Aca-Media, we feature Amanda Lotz discussing her recent work on internet-distributed television and her Media Business Matters podcast. In addition, Brandon Arroyo presents excerpts of his Porno Cultures Podcast including interviews with Peter Alilunas on his entry into the field and an audio tour of the Little Theater in Newark, New Jersey with Whitney Strub.

To help you with your SCMS proposal this month, we reprise an interview with Angelo Restivo on SCMS’s paper-selection process.  Then we bring you a FieldNotes interview with groundbreaking television scholar Lynn Spigel, interviewed by Elana Levine.  Finally, Chris offers to review your SCMS proposal over a pint, with her eyes closed! 

We’re back from the spring semester and talking about graduation and protest, balancing SCMS leadership and research, and a digital research project in transnational streaming radio for your summer listening. We discuss the recent Notre Dame student walkout before presenting an interview with Steven Cohan on his article in the latest issue of Cinema Journal on Danny Kaye, Cohan’s role as SCMS pres...

In this episode, we talk to media studies researchers and teachers involved in protest, organizing, and public scholarship initiatives following the presidential election of 2016. Speaking with Carol Vernallis, Amanda Ann Klein, Chuck Tryon, Jorie Lagerwey, Jason Ruiz, we address a range of issues, from preparations for a Protecting the Commons workshop at SCMS 2017, to Console-ing Passions 2017 a...

Recorded just before the inauguration, this episode takes two oblique angles on politics. First, Stephanie Brown discusses helping students’ find their voice through a podcast assignment for her “Sex and Gender in the Media” class and shares snippets her students’ work. Speaking of podcasts, Chris and Michael discuss PodcastRE.org, an exciting new project for podcast fans and (especially) scholars...

In our last episode of 2016, we present Susan Ohmer discussing the experience of teaching a course on US presidential elections. We also feature SCMS Conference Manager Leslie LeMond on the work that goes into preparations for the annual SCMS conference, including the 2017 Chicago edition.