Fwd: Cinema as Vernacular Modernism Symposium

Alex Zahlten Alex.Zahlten
Thu May 9 11:43:05 EDT 2002


Hi Aaron,

I was wondering how (since you wrote that you have been using the concept of
vernacular 
modernism in relation to Japan) that would look (specifically in Cinema, of
course) in a country 
that probably has a very specific relationship to modernism- Japan hasn't
exactly gone through 
the struggles and stages that made Europe and America reach modernism in the
same 
chronology, so I would suppose there is a very specific brand of modernism,
or a different 
relationship towards it...
Is that right, and how does that effect the use of the concept of vernacular
modernism?

Sorry if the question seems very general-

Alex Zahlten


> Not specifically on Japan, but since I, Mitsuyo, Michael and others have 
> been using the concept of vernacular modernism in relation to Japan, this 
> looks very pertinent. Only sorry I can't go.
> 
> ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
> 
> The Committee on Cinema and Media Studies
> University of Chicago
> 
> May 17-18, 2002
> 
> 
> Symposium
> 
> CINEMA AS VERNACULAR MODERNISM
> 
> 
> The notion of cinema as "vernacular modernism" has recently been
> proposed with regard to classical Hollywood cinema (1920s through
> 1950s), challenging the account of the latter as a type of narrative
> cinema based on universal mental structures and transhistorical
> aesthetic norms. Vernacular Modernism highlights certain aspects of
> Hollywood previously neglected: its relation to contemporary
> modernist movements in the traditional media as well as social and
> economic modernization; its ability to offer mass audiences a
> market-based cultural horizon in which the experience of modernity,
> including its traumatic as well as liberating effects, could be
> reflected and articulated, rejected or assimilated, confronted and
> negotiated. Thus, the concept of vernacular modernism might provide a
> more historically and aesthetically specific approach to reexamining,
> not only the centrality of classical cinema in US-American culture,
> but also the vexed issue of this cinema's worldwide hegemony, above
> and beyond (though not apart from) its well-known economic and
> political interventions.
> 
> Traditionally, historians have critiqued Hollywood hegemony, its
> transnational circulation, as the period's most powerful
> universalizing imperial discourse (the modern equivalent of Latin), a
> visual-acoustic idiom alternative to, and corrosive of, both official
> and diverse cultural heritages. The notion of cinema as the first
> global, modernist vernacular complicates that critique by suggesting
> that the Hollywood film might have translated differently in
> different countries, that it was not only transformed in local
> contexts of reception and existing film cultures but also might have
> played an important role in mediating competing discourses on
> modernity and modernization.
> 
> This symposium will explore the usefulness of the concept of cinema
> as vernacular modernism through a number of case studies from both
> historical and theoretical perspectives. What is the heuristic value
> of the concept for the analysis of particular films, genres, and
> performers? At which level - narrative and thematic concerns, choice
> of settings and milieus, formal and stylistic features - does it work
> and how? Are some films more vernacular-modernist than others? How
> useful is the concept in describing alternative film cultures shaped
> in modernizing metropolitan centers not just in the West (e.g.,
> Shanghai cinema), or competing traditions of transnationally
> circulating, hegemonic cinema such as Hindi film?
> 
> 
>                                 Program
> 
> 
> The symposium will open with a screening of Lonesome (Paul Fejos,
> 1928) on Friday, May 17, 6:00pm, at the Max Palevsky Cinema, Ida
> Noyes Hall (1212 E. 59th Street).
> 
> 
> Saturday, May 18, Film Studies Center, Cobb Hall 307 (5811 S. Elllis 
> Avenue):
> 
> 
> 9:00am  Introduction: Tom Gunning (University of Chicago)
> 
> 
> 9:15    Panel 1   Moderator: Bill Brown (University of Chicago)
> 
>         Lesley Stern (University of California, San Diego),  "How
> Movies Move: The
>         Vernacular in an Age of Globalization"
> 
>         Edward Dimendberg (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)  "Being
> on the Inside  of
>         a Big Inside Story: Film Noir and the Aesthetics of Simultaneity"
> 
>         Jacqueline Stewart (University of Chicago)  "Race Films and
> the Black Vernacular
>         Tradition"
> 
> 
> 11:00   Coffee break
> 
> 
> 11:20   Panel 2   Moderator: Natasa Durovicova (University of Iowa)
> 
>         Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck College, London)  "Vernacular
> Feminism? A Look at the
>         European Flapper and the 'Problem' of Hollywood in the 1920s
> 
>         Zhang Zhen (New York University)  "Competing Moderns On and
> Off the Screen,
>         Shanghai, 1930s"
> 
> 
> 1:00pm  Lunch break
> 
> 
> 2:15    Panel 3   Moderator: John Comaroff (University of Chicago)
> 
>         Rosalind Morris (Columbia University)  "Black and White in
> Noir: Cinematic
>         Criminality and the Order of Desire in Apartheid South Africa"
> 
>         Tejaswini Niranjana (Centre for the Study of Culture and
> Society, Bangalore)
>         "Suku Suku What Shall I Do, or, Is this Colombo Tea? Hindi
> Cinema and the
>         Musical Public Sphere in Trinidad"
> 
>         Dudley Andrew (Yale University) "Masks and Mimicry: Some
> Forms of Cinematic
>         Modernity"
> 
> 
> 4:00    Roundtable discussion
> 
>         Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
>         Norma Field (University of Chicago)
>         James Schamus (Columbia University / Good Machine)
>         Moderators
> 
>         http://humanities.uchicago.edu/openhouse/cvm.html
>         For more information, please call 773 834-1077 or write to
>         cine-media at uchicago.edu
> 
> 
> ----------------- End Forwarded Message -----------------
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate Professor
> International Student Center
> Yokohama National University
> 79-1 Tokiwadai
> Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
> JAPAN
> E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
> Phone: 81-45-339-3170
> Fax: 81-45-339-3171
> 

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