Intersection of Digital Humanities and Cinema/Media Studies

I’d like to propose a session to bring together any cinema studies people who are at this THATCamp, to explore how digital humanities methods are being used and supported in the analysis of film/video. Some people refer to it as quantitative film studies or cinemetrics in projects like:

We might also look at different visualization projects:

Last year Miriam Posner and Jason Mittell led a workshop at the SCMS Conference (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) to interrogate the intersection between digital humanities and cinema/media studies (miriamposner.com/blog/?p=1239). Some of the questions posed are:

  • Where do the two fields converge, and what are their differences?
  • Is a digital humanist ipso facto a media scholar, or do the two fields present different criteria for entry?
  • Media scholars are particularly adept at analyzing cultural representations, such as of race and gender. Might media scholars bring some of these strengths to digital humanities?
  • Many media scholars are interested in issues of reception and audience studies. How might such subfields engage with digital humanities?
  • What might media studies offer to digital humanities, and vice versa?
  • Conversely, do the two fields possess epistemological or methodological contradictions?
  • How might the growing interest in digital humanities alter the field of film and media studies?

I’d like to build off of this and turn it around into a maker session, where we compile links to projects/resources/publications (existing or ideal) that together could form a primer for cinema scholars/critics/enthusiasts/whatever to start exploring DH.

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Make |

About Roxanne Shirazi

I am a master's student in Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, with a specialization in American Studies. My research interests focus on Depression-era American cultural studies, film studies, documentary photography, the Spanish Civil War, Social Realism, labor history, material culture, and digital humanities. I recently earned my MSLIS from Pratt Institute, with an Advanced Certificate in Archives, during which I interned at the Museum of Modern Art Library and NYU's Tamiment Library. I have a BA in Film Studies from UC Berkeley. My previous career was in academic bookstores and publishing.