After Method: Eisenstein Now

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Between 2000 and 2004, Muzei Kino published new, more thorough editions of Eisenstein’s classic writings (Montage and Nonindifferent Nature) and, most important, his never-finished and still untranslated magnum opus, Method. Since then, scholars have been grappling with new perspectives on Eisenstein emerging from this feat of archival research and editing. These texts invite us to reconsider Eisenstein’s theory as a body of work, from his earliest publications to his last writings; they speak in surprising new ways to questions of affect, cognition, realism, philosophy,history, acting, visual culture (and more); and they place his thinking in the context of the global intercultural discourses of his time and ours. The polyglot and unusually wide-ranging nature of Eisenstein’s writings encourage us to consider ways we can build a community of scholars to draw on each other’s expertise in the collective task of reimagining Eisenstein for our time, which in turn makes our endeavor better suited to the roundtable format. Each participant in this roundtable discussion will explore the evolving Eisenstein archive from the vantage of her or his unique research trajectory. By sharing the questions, methods, and concepts at play in “our” Eisenstein and by inviting the audience to join us, we hope to broaden and vary the contexts in which we see our own work and reveal new pathways connecting Eisenstein’s lesser-known writings to a broad range of current disciplinary concerns.

Sub Unit

• Cinema/Television/Electronic Media

Chair

• Elizabeth A. Papazian, U of Maryland, College Park

Roundtable Members

• Luka Arsenjuk, U of Maryland, College Park

• Joan Neuberger, U of Texas at Austin

• Karla Oeler, Stanford U

• Ana Hedberg Olenina, Arizona State U

• Natalia Ryabchikova, U of Pittsburgh