Inventing Film Studies

“Inventing Film Studies goes a long way toward redressing claims by historians such as Eric Smoodin that film studies is one of the most under-historicized disciplines in the humanities. In conjunction with other recently published works, the pluralistic history of motion picture study is beginning to be mapped out by Grieveson and Wasson’s excellent anthology.” - Stephen Michael Charbonneau, International Journal of Communication

“Inventing Film Studies is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of film studies as an academic endeavor. . . . [I]t clearly sets the agenda for further research into the history of film studies. The editors also more than adequately fulfill their goal of identifying the intellectual and institutional spaces where film studies first germinated.” - Jan-Christopher Horak, Screening the Past

“[A] lively collection. . . . Of equal interest to scholars and nonspecialists, this volume should be in all serious film collections. Highly recommended. All readers, all levels.” - G. A. Foster, Choice

“[F]or a field that doesn’t look into its own past or genealogize its own methodological assumptions with the regularity of other disciplines. . .Inventing Film Studies represents an excellent opportunity for solidifying underdocumented or underknown histories, and taking stock of where to go next.” - Michael Sicinski, Cineaste

“[T]he book is the first to seek to tell the story of this discipline from its birth in the early twentieth-century to the present. . . . Inventing Film Studies . . . will be of interest to academics working in many different areas of cinema studies.” - Matthew Campora, M/C Reviews

“The collection’s fourteen essays focus on specific episodes in the Anglo study of film; however, the cumulative effect produces a rich mosaic of film studies, a field that has always been porous, interdisciplinary, and bound to other institutions. . . . Inventing Film Studies is a tremendous contribution to the field and should be welcomed by the community of film and media scholars.” - Eric Hoyt, Moving Image

“This collection contributes new understandings to the history of film studies, particularly regarding the discipline’s development in the humanities and its gradual abandonment of the methodological practices of the social sciences, in which it had its origins. Inventing Film Studies will be welcomed by academics working in cinema studies, and it will provide new entrants to the field with an important introduction to the history of their study.” - Richard Maltby, author of Hollywood Cinema

“This is the best film book that I’ve read in years. It covers the history of film studies, certainly the least historicized discipline in the humanities and social sciences. Contributors show that the field dates at least to the early twentieth century and that it can be traced through a number of institutions: not just the academy but also government, the museum, and the publishing industry, to name just three. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson have produced a book that will change the way film scholars think about their field.” - Eric Smoodin, co-editor of Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method