Maria San Filippo - Fulbright Visiting Professor
About
Maria San Filippo is the 2021-22 Fulbright U.S. Scholar in the Department of American Studies at Universität Innsbruck. She is Associate Professor of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College and Editor of New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Works
Maria San Filippo authored the Lambda Literary Award-winning The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television (2013) and Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media (2021), both published by Indiana University Press, and edited the collection After “Happily Ever After”: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age (Wayne State University Press, 2021). Her Queer Film Classics volume on Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behavior (2014) is forthcoming in fall 2022 from McGill-Queen's University Press.
Teaching
SE American Film, Media and Culture I: Bad Feminists Meet 'Feel-Bad Cinema'
This course examines 21st century American women filmmakers noted for their boundary-testing topics and bold innovations with cinematic form, and whose creative provocations collectively engender a film corpus we’ll consider as (per Roxane Gay) “bad feminist” and (per Dennis Lim) “feel-bad cinema.” Informed by feminist film theory and criticism, we will examine the issues and themes these women filmmakers engage, the controversies they provoke, and the styles they employ to challenge dominant cinematic conventions and political ideologies. The filmmakers we’ll study encompass Hollywood, indie cinema, experimental film, documentary, and short-form “filmmaking” (e.g. web series and limited/TV series), paying special attention to cross-cultural influences on and approaches shared by American and European (especially Austrian) women filmmakers of the new millennium.
PS Critical Area Studies: American Cultures: Nasty Women & American Television Comedy
This course focuses on key contributions to American television comedy and political culture by unruly comediennes and characters from Lucille Ball and Maude to Roseanne and Wanda Sykes to Abbi & Ilana, Samantha Bee, Selina Meyer, and Issa Rae. Analyzing how the combustible combination of unladylike performance and comedic irreverence provokes political resistance and subverts social norms, we will examine how a medium traditionally gendered feminine and derided as “the boob tube” channels creative labor into feminist action. Our explorations will consider several genres and modes of American television comedy in which “nasty women” have thrived, including the domestic and workplace sitcoms; the t(w)een, “single girl,” and female friendship series; and stand-up, sketch, and political satire/parody.
Events
kinovi[sie]on - International Women's Day: Welcome to the USA
Screening and Q&A with the director Assel Aushakimova, moderated Maria San Filippo
March 8, 7:30 pm, Leokino 2