Masterclass: The Vulnerable Spectator

Since 2013 Amelie Hastie has written a column for Film Quarterly titled ‘The Vulnerable Spectator.’  For this masterclass, Professor Hastie will discuss several of her columns and create a larger historical context for them. Setting her work in conversation with early film theorists such as Jean Epstein, Siegfried Kracauer, the Modernist film criticism of Close-Up, and other models both canonical and less so, Professor Hastie’s columns respond to both contemporary film culture and the development of experiences of spectatorship over time through multiple temporalities and viewing contexts.  With examples ranging from Diary of a Teenage Girl(Heller, 2015), Creed (Coogler, 2015), Tomboy (Sciamma, 2011), Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 2014), and Rust and Bone (Audiard, 2012), the masterclass will give us an opportunity to think carefully about the work we do when we write about films and when we watch films, how to write about film to a diverse audience as a considered engagement alongside other forms of writing, and how to draw on our own subjectivity without forsaking critical or theoretical engagement. The masterclass will be of particular interest to postgraduate and early career academics in particular, but we welcome all colleagues to the masterclass.  A dossier of columns will be made available for participants. For more information and to express your interest, please email Melissa Hardie by July 29.

Friday August 2, 10-12
The Rogers Room, John Woolley Building (A20)
The University of Sydney