UMass Graduate Film Studies Newsletter

September 2009 | Anne Ciecko

I hope your semester is off to a great start! I'm writing to tell you a bit about the new UMass Graduate Certificate in Film Studies, launched in Spring 2009. The Certificate is open to UMass graduate students across the campus, as an opportunity to have their work and interest in Film Studies formally acknowledged as an important part of their graduate training.

See the Program Description and Requirements for the Graduate Certificate in Film Studies. The fall 2009 Application Form is due by October 16, 2009.

In Spring 2010, we will be offering a variety of approved seminars for the Graduate Certificate in Film Studies, including the required course Comm 693D Introduction to Film Theory, which will be offered Tuesdays from 4:00-6:55pm.

More details about spring graduate Film Studies courses will be available soon on the UMass Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies website.

The first group of nine students accepted into the Certificate program come from a variety of departments and programs including Communication, Comparative Literature, German and Scandinavian Studies, History, and Social Justice (Education). I'm delighted to share with you the exciting academic profiles of our first nine Graduate Certificate in Film Studies students, and news of some of their accomplishments, including announcement of our first Certificate recipients!

The next deadline for applicants is October 16, 2009. This fall we are also planning a symposium, with details to follow shortly.

Best wishes for a happy and productive fall, Anne Ciecko AssociateProfessor, International Cinema, Department of Communication Graduate Certificate in Film Studies

Graduate Certificate in Film Studies News

Nikolina Dobreva (Comparative Literature/LLC, Humanities and Fine Arts) successfully defended her PhD dissertation "The Curse of the Traveling Dancer: Romani (Self-) Representation from 19th Century European Literature to Hollywood Film and Beyond," supervised by Professor Catherine Portuges. This project examines images of the Roma in fiction films and literature, produced within a wide variety of linguistic, national/transnational, and cultural contexts. Nikolina submitted her dissertation to the Graduate School in August, becoming our first recipient of the UMass Graduate Certificate in Film Studies.  Her current/ongoing research viewsfilm as a culturally-specific visual medium capable of transcending national and ethnic boundaries. She is currently teaching East and Central European Cinema at Middlebury College.

Susan McKenna (Communication, Social and Behavioral Sciences) also successfully completed her PhD and Film Studies Certificate requirements this summer.  Her dissertation, supervised by Professor Carolyn Anderson, is titled "Seeing Lesbian Queerly: Visibility, Community, and Audience in 1980s Northampton."  Susan's work employs feminist film inquiries into sexual, gendered, and raced spectatorship within a cultural studies theoretical and methodological framework. Additionally she is interested in critical pedagogy, and art production and visual culture. An accomplished photographer and published scholar, Susan previously completed MA and MFA degrees in Communication and Art (Photography) at UMass, and has been working as an Assistant Professor with Commonwealth College UMass where she teaches courses that integrate film and media.

Evan Torner (German/LLC, Humanities and Fine Arts), a Graduate Film Certificate student and PhD candidate in German and Scandinavian Studies, has been awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study at the Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg for the 2009-2010 academic year." He's doing dissertation research on East German genre movies (Indianerfilme, musicals and science- fiction from East/West Germnany made between 1960 and 1979); assembling material for an English-language biography of director Gottfried Kolditz; and conducting interviews with some of his favorite electronic music artists in Berlin as part of a book project.

Profiles of Current Students and Recent Recipients

Brian Comfort PhD, History, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Interests include historical study of cultural phenomena and American media portrayal (including film and television images of eccentrics by David Lynch); documentary filmmaking and oral history; screenwriting

Nikolina Dobreva PhD, Comparative Literature/LLC, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Interests include film as culturally-specific visual medium capable of transcending national and ethnic boundaries; images of the Roma in fiction films of Europe and the U.S.; Russian and East European cinema dissertation: "The Curse of the Traveling Dancer: Romani (Self-) Representation from 19th Century European Literature to Hollywood Film and Beyond" (2009, supervisor: Professor Catherine Portuges)

Nancy Inouye PhD, Communication, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Interests include film and sound theory (including film scoring); representations of Asians and Asian Americans in Hollywood film; film studies pedagogy, program development, and curating

Dijana Jelaca PhD, Communication, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Interests include gendered representations of marginalized identities, nationalism, conflict and war, cinematic forms of oppositional gaze, subversion and transgression; films from the former Yugoslavia

Susan McKenna PhD, Communication, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Interests include feminist film inquiries into sexual, gendered, and raced spectatorship within a cultural studies theoretical and methodological framework;  art production and visual culture; critical pedagogy dissertation: "Seeing Lesbian Queerly: Visibility, Community, and Audience in 1980s Northampton" (2009, supervisor: Professor Carolyn Anderson)

Lauren Selfridge MEd, Social Justice, School of Education Interests include social justice-oriented documentary film production; film as a vehicle for social justice education and community dialogue on race, gender, sex, and sexuality; digital photography

Evan Torner PhD, German and Scandinavian Studies/LLC, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Interests include genre and generic representation within the film iconography and taxonomies of the Cold War (including those of the East German DEFA studios); race representation in the cinema of divided Germany; film archival work; music composition for film

Scott Vangel PhD, Comparative Literature/LLC, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Interests include European cinema (including French, German, and Scandanavian auteurs Bresson, Dreyer, Godard, and others); themes of sacrifice in cinema; film theory and philosophy

Delene White PhD, German and Scandinavian Studies/LLC, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Interests include German film adaptation (including Jurek Becker's novels and short stories adapted by East German director Frank Beyer); memory and survival in East German cinema/Holocaust cinema