Jane Gaines

Jane Gaines
Film
Professor
jmg2196@columbia.edu

Jane M. Gaines is Professor Emerita of Literature and English, Duke University and currently Professor of Film, Columbia University. Author of two award-winning books, Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law (North Carolina, 1991) and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago, 2001). A founder of the Visible Evidence conference on documentary, she continues to publish on documentary activism, intellectual property in the internet age, the history of piracy, and most recently has critiqued the “historical turn” in film and media studies as “What Happened to the Philosophy of Film History?” and “Eisenstein’s Absolutely Wonderful, Totally Impossible Project,” in Sergei M. Eisenstein: Notes for a General History of Cinema. Forthcoming is Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Early Film Industries? The online resource, Women Film Pioneers Project, published by the Columbia University Libraries, launched as a pilot project in the future of publishing in 2013: wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu.

Books

Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industry? (University of Illinois, forthcoming).

Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era. University of  Chicago Press, 2001.

Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law (University of North Carolina, 1991).

Online Publications

  “Political Mimesis.” In Eds. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov, Collecting Visible Evidence. University of Minnesota Press, 1999. In Spanish translation as “Mimesis politica,” Cine Documental  (December, 2017): http://revista.cinedocumental.com.ar

“Ways of Seeing Everything.” Politics/Letters.  May 22, 2017. Special John Berger issue

“Wordlessness, To Be Continued…” Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives, Eds. Monica Dall’ Asta and Victoria Duckett. University of Bologna, Italy, 2013, 288 – 302.

Articles in Journals

“On Not Narrating the History of Feminism and Film,” Feminist Media Histories 2, no. 2 (2016): 6 – 31.

"What Happened to the Philosophy of Film History?" Film History  25, nos. 1 - 2 (2013): 70 - 80.

"The Inevitability of Teleology: From le dispositif to Apparatus Theory to dispositifs Plural," Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 31 nos.1-2-3 (2011): 101 – 114.

"World Women: Still Circulating Silent Era Film Prints." Framework 51 – 2 (Fall 2010): 283- 303.

"Sad Songs of NitrateCamera Obscura  22, no. 3-66 ( Fall 2007): 171 –  178. 

"Early Cinema’s Heyday of Copying: The Too Many Copies of L’Arroseur arrosé" Cultural Studies Vol. 20, nos. 2 - 3 (May  2006): 227 - 244. Reprinted in Ed. Tilman Baumgaertel, The Pirate Book: Global Media Piracy and Other Inadmissible Approaches Toward Intellectual Property Rights. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming.

"First Fictions." Signs 30,  no. 1 (Winter 2005), 1293 - 1317.

"Film History and the Two Presents of Feminist Film Theory" Cinema Journal 44. No. 1 (2004).

"Queering Feminist Film Theory." Jump Cut no. 41 (Spring 1997).  Essay review of Chris Straayer, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies.

"Women and Representation: Can We Enjoy Alternative Pleasure?" Jump Cut no. 29 (Spring 1984) / Reprinted in American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives. Ed. Don Lazere. University of California Press, 1987; Sexual Stratagems: Issues in Feminist Film Criticism Ed. Patricia Erens (Indiana University Press, 1990).