Dear MeCCSA subscribers,
Sorry for cross-posting.
best wishes,
Saer Ba
TALK
Tuesday 5 May 2009
5:15 pm. Centre for Film Studies
Lecture Theatre, Ground floor, Arts Building, University of St. Andrews
Prof. Murray Smith, University of Kent at Canterbury
/‘“Green:” On Film and Consciousness.’/
What is the special role of conscious cognition in film spectatorship ?
I begin this paper with some commentary on the history of the concept
and study of ‘consciousness,’ especially over the course of the
twentieth century, in psychoanalysis, behaviourism, and cognitive
psychology. I then consider the degree to which film studies has
addressed the nature and role of conscious cognition within film
viewing. The core of the paper sets out a model for the interplay of
conscious and non-conscious cognition in our engagement with films, and
advances an argument for the centrality of conscious experience not only
to film viewing, but to the enterprise of film criticism as well.
Bio: Murray Smith is Professor and Director of Film Studies at the
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, where he has taught since 1992. He
obtained his MA and PhD in Film Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. From 2005-6 he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow.
Since 1995 he has been an advisory board member of the Centre for
Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. His research interests include
the psychology of film viewing, and especially the place of emotion in
film reception; the philosophy of film, and of art more generally; music
and sound design in film; and popular music. He is currently working on
the implications of evolutionary theory for film culture. His
publications include /Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the
Cinema/ (Clarendon, 1995), /Film Theory and Philosophy/ (co-edited with
Richard Allen) (Clarendon, 1998), /Contemporary Hollywood Cinema/
(co-edited with Steve Neale) (Routledge, 1998), /Trainspotting/ (British
Film Institute, 2002), and /Thinking through Cinema /(co-edited with Tom
Wartenberg) (Blackwell, 2006).
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