Workshop: “Audience Research: Methods and Approaches”
On Friday, 8 July 2022, the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES research group is holding the in-person workshop “Audience Research: Methods and Approaches” at Leibniz University Hannover. The workshop brings together scholars who study historical and contemporary audiences, cinemagoing and home viewing contexts, national identifications and the global impact of film, memories and experiences as well as attitudes and tastes. One central aim is to critically reflect on the process of doing audience research – including choices and challenges as well as thoughts on working with the data, the presentation of research results (beyond the traditional modes) and opportunities for public engagement.
Among the speakers at the workshop are Annette Kuhn (Queen Mary University of London), Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Christine Hämmerling (University of Zurich), Eduard Cuelenaere (University of Ghent) as well as the members of the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES research group Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes, and Alejandra Bulla (Leibniz University Hannover). In addition to the presentations and discussions, the workshop will also feature the audience research done by Kate Egan (Northumbria University) and Peter Turner (Oxford Brookes University) and screen video essays by Catherine Grant, Ariel Avissar, Evelyn Kreutzer, Cormac Donnelly, and Kathleen Loock.
The workshop will be held in the Niedersachsensaal (Conti Campus, Königsworther Str. 1) at Leibniz University Hannover. It is free and open to the public.
Register for the in-person event at Leibniz University Hannover: hollywood@uni-hannover.de
Workshop Program
9:00–9:15 Introduction
9:15–9:45 Featured Project: Memories and Home-Viewing Contexts
Peter Turner (Oxford Brookes University), “Some Observations on Memories of Underage Home Viewings in 1980s Britain”
9:45–10:45 Session 1: Memory and Technology
Annette Kuhn (Queen Mary University of London), “Research Design: Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain”
Kathleen Loock / Stefan Dierkes / Alejandra Bulla (Leibniz University Hannover), “Hollywood Memories: Working with Digital (Research) Platforms”
10:45–11:00 Coffee Break
11:00–12:00 Roundtable Discussion 1: Choices and Challenges
Annette Kuhn, Kathleen Loock, Stefan Dierkes, Alejandra Bulla
12:00–13:30 Lunch
13:30–15:00 Session 2: Attitudes, Tastes, Identities
Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Touching a Nerve, Gently: Researching Media Dislike and Disappointment”
Christine Hämmerling (Zurich University), “Media Practices in a Multi-Methods Approach: Reflections on my PhD Research”
Eduard Cuelenaere (Ghent University), “Why Audiences Matter: An Explorative Study of Audience Reactions to Monolingual Film Remakes”
15:00–15:15 Coffee Break
15:15–16:15 Roundtable Discussion 2: Choices and Challenges
Jonathan Gray, Christine Hämmerling, Eduard Cuelenaere
16:15–16:30 Concluding Discussion
16:30–16:45 Break
16:45–18:00 Video Essay Screening: Reflecting on Audience Memories
Catherine Grant (Birkbeck, University of London / Reading), “CINEMATIC ORGANISMS: Memories & Memorialisation”
Ariel Avissar (Tel Aviv University) on Lord of the Flies (from the “Once Upon a Screen” Project)
Evelyn Kreutzer (Filmuniversität Babelsberg) on Psycho and The Witches (from the “Once Upon a Screen” Project)
Cormac Donnelly (University of Glasgow), “The Story of a Dream,” on Nightmare on Elm Street (from the “Once Upon a Screen” Project)
Kathleen Loock (Leibniz University Hannover), “Memories of It”
18:30 Dinner
Workshop Participants
Alejandra Bulla is currently pursuing her PhD at the English Department of Leibniz Universität Hannover. She is a member of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), where she focuses on Mexican audiences. She has a Master’s degree in American Studies from the University of Erlangen, Germany, and a bachelor’s degree as English teacher from the Universidad Francisco José de Caldas in Bogota, Colombia.
Eduard Cuelenaere holds a doctoral degree (PhD) in Communication Sciences (Ghent University) and in Theatre Studies and Intermediality (University of Antwerp). His research interests centre around the study of serialities (film remakes, reboots, sequels, …), transnational cinema, European (popular) cinema, and international communication. He has particular research expertise in Dutch-Flemish film remakes, Dutch and Belgian cinema, as well as in the relation between film and national identity.
Stefan Dierkes is an American Studies PhD student at Leibniz University Hannover. He is part of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). His dissertation looks at Hollywood’s remaking culture and its impact on German audiences, combining empirical methods, historical research, and film analysis.
Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of seven books, most recently Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, Television Goes to the Movies (with Derek Johnson), and Television Studies 2nd ed. (with Amanda D. Lotz), and co-editor of seven books, most recently Keywords in Media Studies, A Companion to Media Authorship, and Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated Age 2nd ed. He is also Chief Editor of International Journal of Cultural Studies and Co-Editor of NYU Press’ Critical Cultural Communication series.
Christine Hämmerling is a Senior Teaching and Research Assistant at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Zurich University (since 2014). Her main research interests are social movements, trust and professionalization, trade and gift giving, ego documents (Das dokumentierte Ich, 2018), popular taste, reception of popular media & media theory (Sonntags, 20.15 Uhr: Tatort, 2016), the anthropology of space (Wissensmedien des Raums, 2020), cultural theory, and qualitative methods.
Annette Kuhn is Emeritus Professor in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the European Academy, and a Founding Scholar Member of the British Psychoanalytic Society. She was Director of CCINTB and Co-Investigator of CMDA. Her previous academic posts were at the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University and in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow. She writes on film history, on object-relations psychoanalysis and film theory, and on cultural memory in relation to photography and cinema. Publications on cultural memory include An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (2002); Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (2002); and a special issue of Memory Studies on cinemagoing experience and memory (2017, co-edited with Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers). She is co-author, with Guy Westwell, of the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (2020).
Kathleen Loock is Professor of American Studies and Media Studies at Leibniz University Hannover and director of the Emmy Noether research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Her research focuses on Hollywood’s remaking practice, seriality, and the role memory and cultural repetition perform on the levels of identity formation and for the maintenance of imagined communities. She has published on remakes, sequels, reboots, and the nostalgia franchise as well as on TV series revivals, and written, edited, or co-edited six books and special issues on these topics.
Featured Project
The workshop features one research project on memories of underage home viewings in 1980s Britain by Peter Turner (Oxford Brookes University). Peter Turner will present his work in a short, pre-recorded video.
Peter Turner is a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University where he teaches on the Film, Digital Media Production, and Media, Communications and Culture courses. He is the author of Found Footage Horror Films: A Cognitive Approach and a monograph on The Blair Witch Project as part of Auteur’s Devil’s Advocates series.
Video Essays
The workshop features a screening of video essays that reflect on memories of cinema-going and on personal explorations of childhood memories and traumas related to watching films. At the screening, each video essay will be preceded by a short, pre-recorded message from its maker.
Ariel Avissar is a video essayist, lecturer, PhD student and Tisch Film School Scholar at Tel Aviv University; he is Associate Editor at [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, has co-edited Sight & Sound’s “Best Video Essays” poll since 2019, and (along with Evelyn Kreutzer) the “Once Upon a Screen” audio-visual essay collection, and has organized several workshops and seminars on videographic criticism.
Cormac Donnelly is a lecturer in audio engineering based in Manchester, UK. He is currently researching a PhD at the University of Glasgow in videographic practice and film sound. He has published video essays in NECSUS, The Cine-Files, [in]Transition, and Screenworks. He currently holds an associate editor position at the journal [in]Transition.
Catherine Grant is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading, UK. From September 2022, she will be Honorary Professor at Aarhus Universitet, Denmark. She carries out her film and moving image studies research mostly in the form of remix-based video essays. She also runs the Film Studies For Free social media platforms, and is a founding co-editor of the award-winning peer-reviewed journal [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies.
Evelyn Kreutzer is a postdoctoral researcher and video essayist at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, associate editor for [in]transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, and co-editor of the Once Upon a Screen project (with Ariel Avissar). She is primarily interested in videographic scholarship, screen sound & music, and questions of memory, iconicity, the archive, and media historiography. She received her PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University with a dissertation on negotiations of European classical music traditions in American television of the cold-war era in 2020. Her written and videographic work has been published in journals like [in]transition, NECSUS, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, and The Cine-Files.
Kathleen Loock is Professor of American Studies and Media Studies at Leibniz University of Hannover (Germany) and director of the research group “Hollywood Memories: Cinematic Remaking and the Construction of Global Movie Generations,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Her research focuses on remakes, sequels, and reboots, seriality, and memory. Her video essay on Blade Runner 2049—“Reproductive Futurism and the Politics of the Sequel”—was published in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Image Studies 6.3 (2019), shortlisted for the Adelio Ferrero Award, and featured in Sight & Sound’s “Best Video Essays of 2019” poll.
Register now to participate in the HOLLYWOOD MEMORIES project!
You want to be part of the project and share your memories of Hollywood movies with us? Then register here to participate. We will let you know when the questionnaire is launched on our digital research platform.