University of Manitoba - Faculty of Arts - English - Faculty Details
Faculty Details

Faculty (Alphabetical) --- Faculty (by Research Interest)


Dr. Brenda Austin-Smith

Professor
Office: 449 University College
Phone: (204) 474-9121
Email: brenda.austin-smith@umanitoba.ca

Education: PhD (Manitoba), MA (Victoria), BA (Acadia)

 

 

 Brenda Austin-Smith photo

Recent Courses:

  • Cinephilia (Grad course)
  • Film and Affect (Grad course)
  • Film and the City
  • Teen Gross-Out Comedies

Areas of Specialization:

Film and emotion; audience studies; cinema history and cultural memory; narrative rhetoric in fiction and film; melodrama; Henry James; adaptation

Recent publications and other undertakings:

  • “Gene Hackman in The Conversation.”  Forthcoming in Murray Pomerance, ed. Great Performances in American Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2017.
  • “Becoming Ordinary: Fifty Years of Arts and Culture in Canadian Dimension.” Canada Since 1960: A People’s History: A Left Perspective on 50 Years of Politics, Economics and Culture. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2016: 202-229.
  • Host of “A Conversation with filmmaker Mira Nair.” Winnipeg Arts Council “Art Matters” Series. West End Cultural Centre, April 14, 2016.
  • Regular Co-host, with James Borsa, of “Ultra-Sonic Film” on UMFM Radio.
  • “Composing America.” Review Essay. The Henry James Review 35.2 (Summer 2014): 191-98
  • Co-applicant, SSHRC Partner Development Grant: “The Affect Project: Memory, Aesthetics, Ethics.” Co-Applicant with Arlene Young (PI) and Jason Leboe-McGowan (2012-2015)
  • “Secrets, Lies, and ‘Virtuous Attachments’”: The Ambassadors and The 39 Steps Alfred Hitchcock and Henry James: The Men Who Knew Too Much. Griffin, Susan and Alan Nadel, eds. Oxford University Press, 2012
  • “Noting Performance in Three Films” Theorizing Film Acting. Taylor, Aaron, ed. Routledge, 2012
  • “The Ethics of Murder: Trial as Performance in Maternal Melodrama.” Theatricality in Film. Loiselle, Andre and Jeremy Maron, eds. Toronto University Press, 2012: 102-115
  • Co-editor, with George Melnyk, The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010
  • Member, Editorial Board Canadian Journal of Film Studies 2006-2012
  • “Alice in the Cities: The Uses of Disorientation.” Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal, Special Issue on “The Scene.” 5.2 (Summer 2009): 6-10.

Conferences:

  • “Odd Cult Out: Cinema by any ‘other’ name.” FSAC Conference, Calgary, June, 2016.
  • “The Acousmatic City: The Sounds of Summertime.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, March 30-April 3, 2016.
  • “Possessing James: Adaptation, Haunting, and Truffaut’s The Green Room.” Film Studies Association of Canada, Brock University, May 27-29, 2014.
  • “Becoming Ordinary: Fifty Years of Arts and Culture in Canadian Dimension,” Society for Socialist Studies, Brock University, May 27, 2014.
  • “Guilty Pleasures and the Pleasures of Guilt in Marleen Gorris’ A Question of Silence,” ECREA Conference, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2012
  • “Intimate Affects of Film Spectatorship,” SERCIA Conference on Cinema and Intimacy, University of Bourgogne, Dijon, 2012
  • “Davenne, Quint, and the ‘turn’ of Transformation in Truffaut’s The Green Room. Transforming Henry James: International Henry James Conference, Rome, 2011
  • “’Who Knows the Occupied City? Humour as Thirdspace in Divine Intervention.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, New Orleans, 2011
  • “Women, Liminality, and ‘unhomeliness” in the films of Mina Shum.” Film Studies Association of Canada, Ottawa, 2009

Useful Links: