Miriam Hansen

[mjraine at uchicago.edu]

Miriam was a great scholar, an inspiring teaching, and a generous person. Her death is deeply saddening, for reasons beyond the important academic work she had still to complete. I think her work, and particularly her idea of "vernacular modernism" as an "heuristic framework for tracing transnational relations" is particularly helpful for thinking about Japanese film. 

Miriam did have an interest in Japanese cinema and was a member of several Japanese film PhD committees. I was always impressed by her careful reading of students' work -- I have never seen anyone give more detailed advice than she. She will be missed, but we will also be reading her ideas in the work of students and colleagues for a generation to come. 

Miriam would have written more in her book on vernacular modernism but we do have the chapter "Vernacular modernism: tracking cinema on a global scale" in _World cinemas, transnational perspectives_ edited by Natasa Durovicova and Kathleen Newman. She discusses the Shimizu and Naruse films that Criterion has been releasing in the Eclipse series. Reading that while watching the films would be a good way to remember her. 

Michael

Michael Raine
Assistant Professor in Japanese Cinema
University of Chicago


>________________
>Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2011 09:23:08 -0500
>From: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>  
>Subject: Miriam Hansen  
>To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
>
>   This has been spreading around the net, but the
>   great film scholar at the University of Chicago,
>   Miriam Hansen, has passed away. Although she never
>   really worked on Japanese cinema, her concept of
>   vernacular modernism, one that was developed in part
>   through a study of early Chinese Cinema, had a great
>   influence on many of us studying Japan. Citations of
>   her book on early cinema, Babel and Babylon, are
>   spread throughout my book, Visions of Japanese
>   Modernity. She will be missed.
>   This great post on her work has already appeared.
>   There's a lot you can read:
>   http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2011/02/incarnation-of-modern-in-memory-of.html
>
>   Aaron Gerow
>   Associate Professor
>   Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and
>   Literatures
>   Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies
>   Yale University
>   53 Wall Street, Room 316
>   PO Box 208363
>   New Haven, CT 06520-8363
>   USA
>   Phone: 1-203-432-7082
>   Fax: 1-203-432-6764
>   e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
>   site: www.aarongerow.com