Screen Culture Research Group

Studying the Material Culture and Practices of Screen Media

Talks/Seminars/Events
Mia Consalvo, “The Strategies of Square Enix: Corporate Cosmopolitanism and the Contemporary Japanese Game Industry”

Mia Consalvo, “The Strategies of Square Enix: Corporate Cosmopolitanism and the Contemporary Japanese Game Industry”

This talk explored the strategies and decisions made by the Square Enix company of Japan—one of the oldest and most successful Japanese game developers and publishers—as it works to stay competitive in a global marketplace.

Book Launch

Peter van Wyck (Communication Studies, Concordia University), The Highway of the Atom, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2010 Charles Acland (Communication Studies, Concordia University)and Haidee Wasson (Cinema Studies, Concordia University) (eds.) Useful Cinema, Duke UP, 2011 At Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore 211 Bernard West www.drawnandquarterly.com/211bernard This event is sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies (Concordia University),...

Sebastien Caquard, “Mapping Canadian Cinematographic Territories.”

October 21, 2011 Sebastien Caquard (Geography, Concordia University) “Mapping Canadian Cinematographic Territories.” This talk was co-hosted with the Mobilities Research Network.
Screen World Symposium

Screen World Symposium

A Symposium on Screen Technology, Media Space, and Mobile Media

Gregory A. Waller, “16mm Hollywood”

April 6, 2009
Gregory A. Waller (Indiana University), “16mm Hollywood” Additional support for this event came from ARTHEMIS. Gregory A. Waller teaches in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University.  His publications include Moviegoing in America (Blackwell, 2002) and Main Street Amusements: Film and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1895-1930 (Smithsonian Institute Press,...

Erkki Huhtamo, “Tracing the Topoi: Media Archaeology and Topos Study”

April 3, 2009
Erkki Huhtamo (UCLA), “Tracing the Topoi: Media Archaeology and Topos Study” Event report: Huhtamo met with a smaller group of graduate students and faculty to dig deeper into his analytical techniques and preview his forthcoming anthology about methods in media archaeology. Participants prepared by reading a draft of a yet-to-be-published essay by Huhtamo...
Erkki Huhtamo, “Elements of Gigantology: an Archaeology of Public Media Displays”

Erkki Huhtamo, “Elements of Gigantology: an Archaeology of Public Media Displays”

A pioneer in media archaeology—a process of “digging” for patterns of cultural and technological change—Erkki Huhtamo applied his characteristically agile and versatile analysis to the phenomenon of the contemporary ubiquity of urban screens. In what he referred to as an “archaeology of screens,” Huhtamo invoked Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, perhaps the world’s densest concentration of...

Lisa Parks, “Goodbye Rabbit Ears: Analyzing Public Discourses on the US Digital TV Transition”

March 16, 2009 Lisa Parks (UC-Santa Barbara), “Goodbye Rabbit Ears: Analyzing Public Discourses on the US Digital TV Transition” Additional support for this event came from McGill University Department of Art History and Communication Studies. Lisa Parks is Chair and Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where she is also...

Alice Ming Wai Jim, “Running Interference in Second Life”

January 16, 2009 Alice Ming Wai Jim (Art History, Concordia University), “Running Interference in Second Life” Event report: Alice Ming Wai Jim’s talk considered the implications of the growing art industry in the virtual world platform of Second Life for the real-world political economy of art production. According to Jim, artworks that are “nowhere” (SLart),...

Lee Grieveson, “Visualizing industrial citizenship; or, Henry Ford makes movies”

December 12, 2008 Lee Grieveson (University College London), “Visualizing industrial citizenship; or, Henry Ford makes movies” Additional support for this event came from ARTHEMIS. Lee Grieveson is the author of Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth Century America (University of California Press, 2004) and co-editor with Haidee Wasson of Inventing Film Studies (Duke University...

Charles Acland, “Curtains, Carts, and the Mobile Screen”

December 5, 2008
Charles Acland (Communication Studies, Concordia University), “Curtains, Carts, and the Mobile Screen” Event report: Charles Acland’s talk examined the emergence of audio-visual equipment in US classrooms of the post-World War II period. The widespread adoption in schools of “useful” multimedia technologies like the tachistoscope, the overhead projector, and the slide projector was symptomatic...

Bart Simon, “Next-Gen Video Gaming and the Place of the Screen”

October 31, 2008 Bart Simon (Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University), “Next-Gen Video Gaming and the Place of the Screen” Event report: Bart Simon’s talk considered the Nintendo Wii Phenomenon in relation to the analytic possibilities of screen culture studies. Currently the best-selling next-gen console, the Wii has shaken both gamer culture and the game software...