Spring 2013 Catalog - Duke University Press

24
Education in the School of Dreams
Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film
jennifer lynn peterson
“Education in the School of Dreams is an outstanding book written by one
of early cinema’s smartest scholars. Jennifer Lynn Peterson brings the
aesthetic beauty and ideological complexity of the film travelogue to life
on every page. She asks the right questions of these films and their viewing
contexts and offers theoretically sophisticated answers that will have
an impact on historians of travel writing, geography, visual education, and
the social sciences.”—ALISON GRIFFITHS, author of Shivers Down Your
Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View
In the earliest years of cinema, travelogues
were a staple of variety film
programs in commercial motion
picture theaters. These short films,
also known as “scenics,” depicted
tourist destinations and exotic landscapes
otherwise inaccessible to most
viewers. Scenics were so popular
that they were briefly touted as the
future of film. But despite their
pervasiveness during the early twentieth
century, travelogues have been
overlooked by film historians and
critics. In Education in the School
of Dreams, Jennifer Lynn Peterson recovers this lost archive. Through
innovative readings of travelogues and other nonfiction films exhibited
in the United States between 1907 and 1915, she offers fresh insights
into the aesthetic and commercial history of early cinema and provides
a new perspective on the intersection of American culture, imperialism,
and modernity in the nickelodeon era.
Peterson describes the travelogue’s characteristic form and style and
demonstrates how imperialist ideologies were realized and reshaped
through the moving image. She argues that, although educational
films were intended to legitimate filmgoing for middle-class audiences,
they were not simply vehicles for elite ideology. As a form of instructive
entertainment, these technological moving landscapes were both
formulaic and also wondrous and dreamlike. Considering issues of
spectatorship and affect, Peterson argues that scenics produced and
disrupted viewers’ complacency about their own place in the world.
Jennifer Lynn Peterson is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the
University of Colorado at Boulder.
FILM STUDIES
May 400 pages, 91 illustrations (including 10 in color)
paper, 978–0–8223–5453–6, $27.95/£18.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5441–3, $99.95/£75.00
cultural studies
Creativity and Academic Activism
Instituting Cultural Studies
meaghan morris & mette hjort, editors
“A provocative and insightful engagement with the new landscape of the
university. This book brings together a host of leading international schol-
ars in the humanities and social sciences who have lived to tell the tale
of the ‘enterprise university.’ Strategies for rethinking public purpose and
innovative approaches to pedagogy are explored through diverse cultural
locales. A must-read for those who are committed to changing things from
the inside out.”—JANINE MARCHESSAULT, York University
This work explores in detail how
innovative academic activism can
transform our everyday workplaces
in contexts of considerable adversity.
Personal essays by prominent schol-
ars provide critical reflections on
their institution-building triumphs
and setbacks across a range of cul-
tural institutions. Often adopting
narrative approaches, the contributors
examine how effective programs and
activities are built in varying local
and national contexts within a
common global regime of university
management policy. Here they share experiences based on developing
new undergraduate degrees, setting up research centers and postgradu-
ate schools, editing field-shaping book series and journals, establishing
international artist-in-residence programs, and founding social activist
networks.
This book also investigates the impact of managerialism, marketiza-
tion, and globalization on university cultures, asking what critical
cultural scholarship can do in such increasingly adversarial conditions.
Experiments in Asian universities are emphasized as exemplary of
what can or could be achieved in other contexts of globalized university
policy.
Contributors
Tony Bennett, Stephen Ching-Kiu Chan, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Douglas Crimp, Dai Jinhua,
John Nguyet Erni, Mette Hjort, Josephine Ho, Koichi Iwabuchi, Meaghan Morris,
Tejaswini Niranjana, Wang Xiaoming, Audrey Yue
Meaghan Morris is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the
University of Sydney and Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan
University in Hong Kong. Mette Hjort is Chair Professor and Head of
Visual Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, where she is also
Director of the Centre for Cinema Studies.
CULTURAL STUDIES/ASIAN STUDIES
Available 312 pages Rights: World excluding Asia, Australia, and New Zealand
paper, 978–1–932643–02–2, $24.95/£16.99
cloth, 978–1–932643–20–6, $89.95/£67.00