Janelle Blankenship

Ph.D. (Duke University)

University College 4434
519-661-2111 ext. 87882
jblanke2@uwo.ca

Office Hours:

Areas of Interest

19th-century optical technologies; early and silent-era cinema; German film history, European avant-garde, popular science film.

Selected Publications

  • European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), co-edited with Tobias Nagl, 416 pp. [Review http://www.hhprinzler.de/2015/07/european-visions/]
  • Holes, Burrows, Lines of Flight: Media and Spatiality in Deleuze and Guattari, Issue Editor, Polygraph, International Journal of Culture and Politics Vol. 14, 162 pp.
  • “Alfred Andersch, André Bazin, Film” (with Tobias Nagl), in Norman Ächtler, ed., Alfred Andersch 100: Engagierte Autorenschaft im Literatursystem der Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, forthcoming 2015/2016).
  • Introduction: “Towards a Politics of Scale” (with Tobias Nagl), in Janelle Blankenship and Tobias Nagl, eds., European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 15-48.
  • “Veit Helmer’s Tuvalu, Cinema Babel and the (Dis)Location of Europe” (with Tobias Nagl), in Janelle Blankenship and Tobias Nagl, eds., European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 351-366.
  • “The Archival Impulse and the Digitization of European Film History: The European Film Gateway Project” (with Thomas Ballhausen), in Janelle Blankenship and Tobias Nagl, eds., European Visions: Small Cinemas in Transition (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 151-172.
  • “1 November 1895: Premiere of ‘Wintergarten Program’ Highlights Transitional Nature of Early Film Technology,” in Jennifer Kapczynski and Michael Richardson, eds., New History of German Cinema ed. Jennifer Kapczynski and Michael Richardson (Rochester: Camden House, 2012), 23-30.
  • “So much Tenderness: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günther Kaufmann and the Ambivalence of Inter-Racial Desire” (with Tobias Nagl), in Brigitte Peucker, ed., A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Press, 2012), 516-539.
  •  “‘Film-Symphonie vom Leben und Sterben der Blumen‘: Plant Rhythm and Time-Lapse Vision in Das Blumenwunder (1926),” Intermédialités: Histoire et Théorie des Arts, des Lettres, et des Techniques No.16 (Fall 2010): 83-103.
  •  “(Don’t) Look Now: Hallucinatory Art History in Who Was Edgar Allan,” in Roy Grundmann, ed., Companion to Michael Haneke (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Press, 2010), 279-300.
  •  “To attract/to alternate: The Skladanowsky Experiment,” Cinema & Cie: International Film Studies Journal no. 9 (2007): 61-79.
  • “Liste für gebrauchte Films zum Verkauf: Used Films for Sale in Germany and Austro-Hungary in 1913,“ in Frank Kessler and Nanna Verhoeff, eds., Networks of Entertainment: Early Film Distribution 1895-1915 (Amsterdam: John Libbey Press: 2007), 180-195.
  •  “Leuchte der Kultur: Imperialism, Imaginary Travel, and the Skladanowsky Welt-Theater,“ Martin Loiperdinger, ed., KINtop: Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films (Special Issue “Sources and Perspectives on Early Cinema”) 14-15 (Fall 2006): 150-170.
  • “Disruption and Flickering in the Weimar Republic” [Frances Guerin, A Culture of Light: Cinema and Technology in 1920s Germany (Univ. of Minn. Press)], New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics Vol. 57 (Winter 2006): 160-164. [Review Essay]
  • “Arno Holz vs. Thomas Mann: Media Fantasies of Modernism,” Modernist Cultures (Special Issue: “Media and Message in German Modernism”) Vol. 1, Issue 2 (Winter 2005): 72-109.
  • “‘Second Nature’ and the Cinema. Rachel Moore’s Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic” [Rachel Moore, Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic (Duke University Press)], Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg-Lukács-Gesellschaft Vol. 5 (2001): 130-133. [Review Essay]
  •  “Preface: Media and Spatiality in Deleuze and Guattari,” Polygraph, International Journal of Culture and Politics Vol. 14 (2002): 3-15.
  • “Futurist Fantasies: Lukács’ ‘Thoughts Toward an Aesthetic of the Cinema’,” Polygraph, International Journal of Culture and Politics Vol. 13 (2001): 21-29.
  • Translations published in New German Critique,Polygraph: International Journal of Cultureand Politics, and Anton Kaes, Michael Cowan and Nicolas W. Baer, eds. The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory and Debates 1907-1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming 2015).

Honours and Distinctions

  • Smallman Research Grant, University of Western Ontario, 2012
  • Principal Investigator, International Research Award: Educating the Nation: The Magic Lantern as Propaganda and Mass Medium in Imperial Germany, University of Western Ontario, 2008-2009
  • International Collaborator, SSHRC Standard Research Award, Animation de l’image et juxtaposition d’images: Émergence d’une culture iconique et avènement d’un langage visuel, Principle  Investigators: Andre Gaudreault and Bernard Perron, Université de Montréal, 2007-2010
  • Nominated, Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching, Univesity of Western Ontario, 2008
  • USC Teaching Honor Roll Award of Excellence, University of Western Ontario, 2007, 2008
  • Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow, Department of German, New York University, 2005-2007
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, Pembroke Centre for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University, 2004-2005 [Magnifying Time and Space: New Ways of Seeing in the 19th-Century]
  • Fulbright Scholar, Comparative Literature, University of Vienna, 1994-1995