Review of the transnational cinemas special interest group panels at the society for cinema and media studies conference, Seattle, Washington, USA, March 13–17, 2019

Abstract

Disciplines and arenas of scholarly endeavour are rarely fixed categories. While they do not change overnight, over a period of time one can track how they expand their boundaries. Nomenclatures and categories are often the semiotic vanguard of such changes. Perhaps in the case of cinema studies, especially as it relates to the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, one can easily identify two such moments – the year 2002, when the organization changed its official name from Society of Cinema Studies, and 2018, when the name of its peer-reviewed journal was changed from Cinema Journal to The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Such changes in name are a sign of disciplinary evolution, and an attempt to account for the efflorescence of new objects, trends and directions that emerge with tectonic shifts in the dimensions of the discipline. The ripple effects of such changes were clearly visible in the proceedings of the Transnational Cinemas Special Interest Group (SIG) at the 2019 Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference held in Seattle. Founded in 2012, the Transnational Cinemas SIG has been discussing a potential change in its name since last year to reflect the larges shifts in the discipline, and also better represent the work of its members who work on areas of screen culture and media studies beyond just cinema. From its very inception, the Transnational Cinema SIG annual meeting has been a space of discussion about such issues. Questions such as what the ‘transnational’ is, what are its methodological implications and what is its relevance to the study of cinema have been integral part of these annual meetings, leading in one case, to a roundtable on this topic that was published in the Frames Cinema Journal in 2016. It is perhaps this scholarly investment that has made the question of nomenclature so important to the SIG. At this year’s Transnational Cinemas SIG annual board meeting held on 13 March 2019, this question re-emerged as a key point of discussion among its attendees. Keeping with the theme of nomenclature, one of the key announcements made at the meeting on behalf of Deborah Shaw, was the change in the name of Transnational Cinemas journal (2010–2018) to its current form, Transnational Screens. The annual meeting was also where two key announcements were made. First and foremost, elections for two posts in the board membership were made – one for the post of Graduate Student Representative, and the other for the post of Co-President, to replace Elena Caoduro stepped down after a two-year stint with Raphael Raphael. The other key announcement was the declaration of the first Transnational Cinemas Graduate Student Writing Prize.