Cinema at the Crossroads: Bruce Conner's Atomic Sublime, 1958-2008
314 West Orange Street Lancaster, PA 17603
Dr. Homay King
Cinema at the Crossroads provides a close reading of the avant-garde films of San Francisco artist Bruce Conner. Conner's signature style of rapid-fire, rhythmic editing and groundbreaking use of popular music has earned him a reputation as “the father of MTV,” though his enduring stylistic influence is also evident in the recombinatory aesthetics of the Youtube “mash-up” and remix culture at large. My dissertation offers a critical examination of Conner’s legacy by situating his films within the context of the history, politics, and culture of Cold War America.
Fall 2012 Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Franklin & Marshall College. Course: TDF374: Peeping Toms and Big Brothers: Surveillance, Voyeurism, and Cinema. Fall 2010—Fall 2011 Teaching Assistant, Program in Film Studies, Bryn Mawr College. • HART110: Identification in the Cinema (Prof. Homay King) • HART299: History of Narrative Cinema, 1945 to the Present (Prof. Homay King) • HART238: Silent Film: From the U.S. to Soviet Russia and Beyond (Prof. Timothy Harte)
Selected Publications: Encyclopedia entries on “Bruce Conner,” “A MOVIE,” “Larry Jordan,” and “Rose Hobart” for The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (online resource), ed. Juan Suarez (Forthcoming) “Waiting to be Seen,” in James Coupe: On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers, exhibition catalogue, The Philips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College, August 2013. “From Art to Experience: The Porous Philosophy of Ray Johnson,” and entry in “Reading Ray: VanDerBeek Deep,” Special Issue on Ray Johnson, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies (Fall 2011). At: http://www.blackmountainstudiesjournal.org/wp/?page_id=137. “Celluloid Circus: Three ‘Ruckus’ Films by Red Grooms,” Old Masters and Modern Muses: Red Grooms’s Portraits of Artists, 1957-2009, exhibition catalogue, Bryn Mawr College, 2010. “Art on the Front Lines: Contemporary Artists and Politics,” Radical History Review, Issue 106 (Winter 2010): 198-214. Selected Conference Papers and Invited Talks: “Fallout Films: Bruce Conner's Atomic Sublime, 1958-1976,” Bancroft Library Round Table, University of California, Berkeley, November 21, 2013. “Marilyn, Wonder Woman, and the Feminist Motion Study,” Visual Culture Colloquium, sponsored by the Center for Visual Culture, Bryn Mawr College, November 6, 2013. “Cinema as Medium in Bruce Conner’s A MOVIE.” Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium, Henry Clay Frick Museum/Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, New York City, April 20, 2012. “Virtual Panopticons: The Ethics of Observation in the Digital Age.” Panel: Politics of the Panoramic: Spectacle, Surveillance, Resistance; Chair: Prof. Alan Wallach. College Art Association Conference, Los Angeles, February 24, 2012. “Art as Experience: The (Porous) Philosophy of Ray Johnson.” Panel: Ray Johnson. 2nd Annual Re-Viewing Black Mountain College International Conference, University of North Carolina, Asheville, October 9, 2010. “Locating Marilyn: Andy Warhol, Bruce Conner, and the Serial Star.” Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture Annual Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 21, 2010.
Fanny Bullock Workman Travel Fellowship, Bryn Mawr College (Spring 2013); Mary Patterson McPherson Curatorial Internship, Bryn Mawr College (Fall 2012, 2009-2010); Doris Still Carland Prize for Outstanding Teaching, Bryn Mawr College (2012); Teaching Assistantship, Program in Film Studies, Bryn Mawr College (2010-2011)