SOUTH BEND – Indiana University South Bend’s Office of Community Engagement and Langlab will welcome Dr. Elaine Roth to the Pop-Up University presenter’s stage on Thursday, March 21 at 6:00pm. This informal, free, public event will be held at Langlab (1302 High St. South Bend, Indiana).
The public is invited to join us as Dr. Roth presents: “Now You See Them:
Women Screenwriters & Directors in Early Hollywood.”
In response to controversy surrounding the 2014 Academy Awards, in 2016 the Academy of Motion Pictures invited more women and people of color into its largest incoming class. However, the coverage of Hollywood continues to project its unbalanced racial and gender dynamics backwards into history, with claims such as, “Hollywood historically has been a boys’ club.” In fact, the numbers are much worse than they used to be! White women and African Americans made major contributions to early cinema, in far greater percentages than the late twentieth-century or the twenty-first century. While women directors were largely eliminated by the early 1920’s, white women screenwriters continued to participate in the industry into the 1940’s. By the middle of the century, however, women screenwriters and directors were largely gone. Meanwhile, in the twenty-first century, early women screenwriters and directors have been largely forgotten by everyone except film historians. This presentation will help dispel the fantasy that white men have always dominated the U.S. film industry by asserting the significance of women’s participation in the early days of Hollywood.
Pop-Up University events are free and open to public. Attendees are invited to arrive early to purchase dinner, snacks, coffee, tea, cocktails, and mocktails from the LangLab cafe & bar. Depart at 7:15 or stay late for informal discussion and networking.
About the Speaker: Elaine Roth is Professor of Film Studies and Interim Chair of the English Department at Indiana University South Bend. She recently held a Fulbright-García Robles Chair of U.S. Studies at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. Co-editor of the collection Motherhood Misconceived: Representing the Maternal in U.S. Films, she recently had a chapter on “The Power of Sentimental Cinema and Sentimental Politics: Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014),” included in the forthcoming collection Global Sentimentality. She is currently working on a project on Patricia Highsmith’s novels and diaries.
About Pop-Up University: Pop-Up University is a series of brief off-campus talks by IU South Bend faculty on topics of interest to the public. All events are FREE and open to the public.
About Langlab: Langlab is a multi-use co-workspace facility that can be used to engage multiple demographic groups in artistic, musical, and intellectual experiences that represent the culture of our community.
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