Against canon: Reflections on diversifying film and media studies

ABSTRACT

While the categories of the global and the transnational have gained currency as potent frameworks for introducing students to questions of race, power, borders, and ethnicity, we are inhabiting a time when narrowly-defined ideas about borders and citizenship are also on the rise. Globally, populist reframing definitions of legitimate belonging on ethnonationalist lines and violent forms of exclusion of minorities are on the ascendant. How do we, in the field of media and communication studies, broadly speaking, see our work intervening in these discourses? How can our choices about what to teach and what to exclude from our syllabi align with, or take away from the kind of anti-racist, anti-hegemonic pedagogy needed to answer the urgent political questions of the times? Dealing with such questions and drawing inspiration from Paula Chakravarty’s interview in this volume, this essay explores the tensions inherent in the field of film, media and communication studies pedagogy as we try to balance inclusion and ethicality with the weight of canons.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive syllabus
• canon
• film and media
• pedagogy
• university

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Notes

1 Colleen Lye, “US ethnic studies and Third Worldism, 40 years later,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 11, no.2 (2010): 188-193.

2 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs and Charlton Mcllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 257.

3 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs and Charlton Mcllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” 260.

4 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs and Charlton Mcllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” 261

5 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs and Charlton Mcllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” 254

6 Angharad N. Valdivia, “Latina Media Studies,” Feminist Media Histories 4, no.2 (2018):101-106.

7 Vicki Mayer, Andrea Press, Deb Verhoeven and Jonathan Sterne, “How Do We Intervene in the Stubborn Persistence of Patriarchy in Communication Scholarship?” in D.T Scott & A.Shaw (eds) Interventions: Communication Theory and Practice. New York: Peter Lang.

8 Vicki Mayer, Andrea Press, Deb Verhoeven and Jonathan Sterne, “How Do We Intervene in the Stubborn Persistence of Patriarchy in Communication Scholarship?” in D.T Scott & A.Shaw (eds) Interventions: Communication Theory and Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 2018), 53-65.

9 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs and Charlton Mcllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” 261

10 Racquel J. Gates and Michael Boyce Gillespie, “Reclaiming Black Film and Media Studies,” Film Quarterly 72, no. 3 (2019): 13-43.

11 Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988)

12 “From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Artnews, May 30, 2015. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/retrospective/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-artists-4201/

13 Ibid

14 Ibid

15 Elena Gorfinkel, “Against Lists,” Another Gaze. November 29, 2019. https://www.anothergaze.com/elena-gorfinkel-manifesto-against-lists/

16 Ibid

17 Ibid

18 Ibid

19 Ibid

20 Nick James, “How we made the Greatest Films of All Time poll,” June 8, BFI.org. 2021. https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/polls/greatest-films-all-time/introduction

21 Hannah McGill, "Women on Film: The ladies vanished," October 27, BFI.org 2017. https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/women-film-ladies-vanished

22 Martha M. Lauzen, “Thumbs Down 2020: Film Critics and Gender, and Why it Matters,” https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-Thumbs-Down-Report.pdf

23 Malini Guha, “Revisiting Lists in a Time of Rebellion,” Mediapolis Journal 5, no. 2, July 5, 2020. https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2020/07/revisiting-lists-in-a-time-of-rebellion/

24 Jennifer Proctor & Miranda Banks, “Antiracist Strategies for Inclusive Film and Media Education: Introduction,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 7, no. 5 (Summer 2020). https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jcms/18261332.0062.601/--antiracist-strategies-for-inclusive-film-and-media-education?rgn=main;view=fulltext

25 Jennifer Proctor & Miranda Banks, “THE EDIT 10,” https://editmedia.org/best-practices/

26 Proctor & Miranda Banks, “Best practices in Inclusive Teaching in Media Production.”

27 Ibid

28 Bambi Higgins, “Step One in Adopting Antiracist Pedagogies: Know the Stakes and Check Yourselves,” Jennifer Proctor and Miranda Banks (eds) Antiracist Strategies for Inclusive Film and Media Education, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 7, no. 5 (Summer 2020). https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/18261332.0062.602/--step-one-in-adopting-antiracist-pedagogies-know-thestakes?rgn=main;view=fulltext

29 Janet Staiger, “The Politics of Film Canons,” Cinema Journal 24, no. 3, Spring 1985, 4-23

30 Staiger, “The Politics of Film Canons,” 5

31 Staiger, “The Politics of Film Canons,” 9

32 Staiger, “The Politics of Film Canons,” 9

33 Staiger, “The Politics of Film Canons,” 11

34 Andrew Sarris. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968), 20

35 Usha Iyer, “A Pedagogy of Reparations: Notes Toward Repairing the Film and Media Studies Curriculum,” Feminist Media Histories 8, no.1, (2022) 181-193

36 Iyer, “A Pedagogy of Reparations,” 184

37 Iyer, “A Pedagogy of Reparations,” 185

38 Masha Salazkina, “World Cinema as Method,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 29, no. 2, Autumn 2020, pp 11

39 Iyer, “A Pedagogy of Reparations,” 190

40 Andrew Higson, The Concept of National Cinema, Screen 30, no. 4, Autumn 1989, Pages 36–47; Stephen Crofts (1993) Reconceptualizing national cinema/s, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 14:3, 49-67.

41 Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton University Press, 2001)