5C Film & Media Studies Undergraduate Conference

5C Film & Media Studies Undergraduate Conference Program, 2020

The 5C Film and Media Studies Undergraduate Conference is an annual event designed to build community among students studying film and media on each of the campuses within the Five Colleges. The conference provides our most engaged students with an opportunity to hone their presentation skills, and to share insights from their work with a wider audience. Participants each give a brief (10-15 minute) presentation as part of a panel with 2-3 fellow students working on related themes (the conference organizers assemble these panels). Each panel includes time for questions and discussion. This is a standard format for academic conferences in the humanities and social sciences, so the experience offers an additional benefit for participants who are considering graduate school. Although the conference uses a formal structure, it is focused on providing a friendly, supportive atmosphere for sharing ideas and meeting colleagues across the Five Colleges.

Participants present scholarly work they have done in and around Film and Media Studies over the course of their undergraduate career. This material might come from a final paper in a class, an independent study, or a senior thesis. Submissions may be on any form of media (film, television, radio, video games, podcasts, Internet media, etc.) and may utilize variety of critical approaches (textual analysis, historical studies, explorations of archiving and curating, critical interventions presented in a creative format such as a videographic essay or digital platform, etc.).

Please note, however, that this is not a venue for showing student films and other forms of media production (consider submitting to the 5C Student Film and Video Festival instead).

5C Film and Media Studies Undergraduate Conference
2020 Conference Program
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Mount Holyoke College, 101 Dwight Hall
Free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible

8:45—9:00 AM
Coffee, followed by Opening Remarks from Robin Blaetz and Josh Guilford, conference co-organizers

9:00—10:00 AM
Panel 1: Cinema and National History
  • Izzy Yiqi Chen (MHC), “Navigating Tokyo from Stray Dog to Ikiru: Japan’s Postwar Recovery in the Cinema of Kurosawa Akira”
  • Mian Ding (SC), “Me, Nostalgic?”: Prospective Nostalgia and Fragmentation in Paolo Gioli’s According to My Glass Eye and Film Stenopeico”
  • Wen Rui Tai (SC), “Nexus of Meeting Gazes: Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, Cina as Scene of Cross-Cultural Conflict”

10:00-11:00 AM
Panel 2: Analyzing Audiences

  • Nina Barker (HC), “Telenovela Consumption in the Brazilian Diaspora”
  • Makena Rasmussen (HC), “For Myself Only: Self-Presentation on “Finstas” or “Fake Instagram” Accounts”
  • Saffron Hefta-Gaub (SC), “’Critical Role: When Passionate Fans Come Face-to-Face with a Streaming Service Dragon”

11:00 AM—12:00 PM:
Panel 3: Contemporary Media Forms: Ethics and Politics

  • Dutch Clark (HC), “‘Laughing Matters: Aziz Ansari, Sexual Assault, and the Stand-up Special as Adaptation”
  • Indie Beare (SC), “Bury Me on YouTube: Contemporary Death Media and Collective Response”

12:00—1:00 PM Catered Lunch for all Panelists and Attendees

1:00-2:00 PM
Panel 4: Spaces of Conflict

  • Sara Meier Clark (SC), “Panoptic Horror: Seen, Unseen, and Unknown in The Blair Witch Project”
  • Anna Maffa (SC), “The Symbolism of Rooftops in Marock”
  • Leah Cohen (UMASS), “Self-Made: Women and Identity in Israeli Film”

2:00-3:00 PM
Panel 5: Unpacking Apocalyptic Cinema

  • Nanfang Xu (MHC), “Apocalyptic Imagery in The Wandering Earth and Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction”
  • Carol Song (MHC), “Reinterpreting Survivalism and Death in Apocalyptic Context”
  • Mia Sigler (MHC), “Not Minding That It Hurts: Social Recognition and Metaphysical Personhood for Artificial Intelligence in the Apocalypse”

3:00-4:00 PM
Panel 6: Participatory Media

  • Emma Logsdon (MHC), “glad to see you (grateful to be seen): fanfiction as a vehicle for healing”
  • Neva Newcombe (SC), “The Act of Killing and Its Significance for Conventions of Humanitarian Documentary”
  • Grace O’Rourke (MHC), “’In Another Dimension, With Voyeuristic Intention’: Liminality In and Around The Rocky Horror Picture Show”

4:00-4:30 Reception with coffee, tea, and light refreshments