Jonathan Knapp
Visiting Lecturer in Cinema & Media Studies
My primary research focuses on the relationship between media and the environment. My current project examines location scouting and location management practices for mid- to late-twentieth century American films of various genres, including war, the Western, science fiction, and a biblical epic. I have ongoing interests in experimental cinema, landscape history and theory, media theory, posthumanism, and the representation of violence. I have written a book, along with Aaron Kerner, entitled Extreme Cinema: Affective Strategies in Transnational Media (Edinburgh UP, 2016), which examines how numerous early twenty-first century films and videos (from American horror to works of the “New French Extremity”) obsessively depicted the human body in heightened states of ecstasy and duress.
Future projects include a study of the federal government’s use of audiovisual media to present the nation’s lands as “wilderness” and natural resource, and an examination of film and land art works that use sunlight as a form of cinematic projection.
Education
- B.A., Bowdoin College
- M.A., San Francisco State University
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Current and upcoming courses
Ecological Approaches to Cinema and Media Studies
CAMS219
This course examines ecology’s intersection with cinema and media studies. Amidst climate change, ecological theorists have complicated boundaries between nature and technology and between humans and nonhumans. We will focus on the intersection of these ecological conversations with cinema and media studies. This course will consider a range of media, from mushrooms to cyborgs; explore cinematic innovations aimed at depicting nonhuman actors; discuss how media create their own environments; and cover topics like digital waste. Course readings will include a range of contemporary ecological perspectives, including texts from Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Black Studies, and Indigenous Critical Theory. We will apply these ideas in discussions of recent films.
(CAMS 219 and ES 219 are cross-listed courses.)-
Media and Paranoia
CAMS268
From worries about digital surveillance, to the widespread dissemination of misinformation, we live in a paranoid age. But technological anxiety and mistrust are hardly new to our culture. We will see how emerging media technologies have been met with fear throughout history—from beliefs that early electronic media such as radio could contact other worlds, to contemporary concerns about how corporations and governments track our every behavior. We will trace how popular media such as film have represented paranoia, from 1950s science fiction to 1970s thrillers, and conclude by examining how paranoia is central to so much of today’s popular culture and political discourse. Central to our exploration will be an examination of how our understanding of “reality” has shifted alongside our adaptation of emerging technologies.