- Convenors:
-
Emily Hong
(Haverford College)
Elena Guzman (Indiana University Bloomington)
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- Chair:
-
Darcie DeAngelo
(University of Oklahoma)
- Discussants:
-
Lee Douglas
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jenny Chio (University of Southern California)
Alexandra D'Onofrio (University of Manchester)
Elena Guzman (Indiana University Bloomington)
Emily Hong (Haverford College)
- Format:
- Roundtable
- Sessions:
- Monday 6 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How can ethnographic filmmaking, a practice forged in the height of anthropology's colonial conceit, be retooled for a decolonial feminism? This roundtable will discuss how feminist decolonial approaches to sensory image-making and storytelling make it possible to see, feel, and know, otherwise.
Long Abstract:
How can ethnographic filmmaking, a practice forged in the height of anthropology's colonial conceit, be rethought and retooled for a decolonial feminism? By extension, how do feminist approaches to filmmaking transform representations of the human experience? Observational filmmaking has long been an accomplice in demarcating ethnographic subjects as the "exotic other." If a decolonial feminism is, as Françoise Vergès (2019) contends, "a struggle that demands equality between knowledges and contests the order of knowledge imposed by the west," what role can feminist ethnographic filmmaking play in contesting and reappropriating such dominant gazes? What alternative decolonial futures become possible when activating a feminist lens? In this roundtable, we will discuss how feminist decolonial approaches to sensory image-making and narrative storytelling make it possible to see, feel, and know, otherwise. We will explore how ethnographic film form, feminist phenomenology and epistemology, and diverse filmmaking methodologies make it possible to imagine other political and social futures. Building on the trail blazing work of feminist scholar-filmmakers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Trinh Minh-Ha, we will discuss feminist futures for ethnographic filmmaking through approaches that prioritize a feminist ethics of care (D'Onofrio), as well as techniques of feminist sensory ethnography that foreground embodied knowledge (Guzman and Hong). We will then turn to consider how these practices may advance ethnography and filmmaking in terms of form and genre (Chio), as well as how we approach the kinds of ethnographic labor needed to produce and reproduce knowledge through filmmaking (Douglas & DeAngelo).
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 6 March, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
Alexandra's research combines collaborative, observational and experimental filmmaking, theatre improvisations and participatory animation with the anthropology of migration, memory, imagination and storytelling.
Paper long abstract:
Alexandra D’Onofrio is a visual anthropologist, a programmer and a community arts facilitator. In the past few years she has been using documentary filmmaking, animation, theatre and storytelling as collaborative methods of research on the topics of migration. In her social and cultural work on the ground, she applied similar creative methods in order to create social contexts to foster new encounters and the sharing of stories, by co-founding in Milan the Fandema community theatre group, the Italian language school for newcomers Asnada, and the storytelling project on motherhood MAdRI.
She holds an MA in Visual Anthropology and a PhD in “Anthropology, Media and Performance” from the University of Manchester, (UK). She was the Sociological Review Fellow at Keele University for the academic year 2019-2020, and became a staff member of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology as well as lecturer at the department of social anthropology at Manchester in January 2021.
Paper short abstract:
Emily Hong is a Korean American visual anthropologist and filmmaker based in Philadelphia. Emily is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies at Haverford College, a co-founder of Ethnocine and Rhiza Collectives, and an Asian American Documentary Network Leadership Team member.
Paper long abstract:
Emily Hong is a Korean American visual anthropologist and filmmaker based in Philadelphia. Emily is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Visual Studies at Haverford College, a co-founder of Ethnocine and Rhiza Collectives, and a Leadership Team member of the Asian American Documentary Network. Informed by her experiences as a multiracial immigrant with ancestors on both sides of the colonial equation, her work seeks to challenge the colonial legacies of anthropology and documentary filmmaking by creating space to honor non-Western ways of knowing and being. Emily's short films GET BY (2014), NOBEL NOK DAH (2015), and FOR MY ART (2016), have explored solidarity and labor, womanhood and identity in the refugee experience, and the gendered spectatorship of performance art, respectively. Her current feature project ABOVE AND BELOW THE GROUND features indigenous women and punk rock pastors leading an environmental movement in Myanmar. Emily's work builds on over fifteen years of experience facilitating cross-cultural organizing and campaigns with grassroots social movements in Asia and the US with a focus on indigenous rights, environmental and economic justice. She has received support from the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, Bertha Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, and the Gotham Film & Media Institute.
Paper short abstract:
Jenny Chio is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her work addresses ethnographic film theory and practice, ethnic minority and Indigenous cultural politics in China, and the persistence of the rural in global imaginaries.
Paper long abstract:
Jenny Chio is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her work addresses ethnographic film theory and practice, ethnic minority and Indigenous cultural politics in China, and the persistence of the rural in global imaginaries.
Paper short abstract:
A Lecturer of Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Visual Anthropology Review, Lee Douglas unpacks how the past is reconstructed and the future reimagined through engagements with the traces of political violence and decolonization in Spain, Portugal & the Iberian Atlantic.
Paper long abstract:
Lee Douglas an anthropologist, curator, and filmmaker and a Lecturer of Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths. Combining ethnographic research and multimodal media production, she unpacks how the past is reconstructed and the future reimagined through collective and individual engagements with the traces of political violence, displacement, and decolonization in Spain, Portugal, and the Iberian Atlantic.
She was the head researcher of the project “Militant Imaginaries, Colonial Memories” (MSCA-IF-2019-895197) which analyzed individual and collective uses of the material and visual traces left by entangled historical events: the Carnation Revolution that marked an end to Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship; the conclusion of the Portuguese imperial project; and the return migrations sparked by these events. She has been a Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History at NOVA University in Lisbon and at the Collections Department at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia.
She is the Co-Editor in Chief of Visual Anthropology Review, a member of the Writing with Light Editorial Collective, and a Working Group Leader for the TRACTS Cost Action Network.
As a scholar, educator, and practitioner, Douglas is committed to forms of collaborative visual research capable of mobilizing anthropological research findings across disciplines and borders. In this spirit, she has undertaken multimodal media projects to elucidate how the past bears on the present through diverse visual forms.