BA(Hons)(Bulmershe) PhD(Warw)
Associate Professor
Contact
Office: Richardson 6C13
Tel: 64 3 4798615
Email: catherine.fowler@otago.ac.nz
Research Interest
Following her PhD on the films of Chantal Akerman, she lectured from 1994-2004 in Film Studies at Southampton Institute of Higher Education, UK. As well as leading the BA (Hons) in Film Studies and being made a Reader in Research (in 2001) she helped develop and then led the MA in Independent Film and Filmmaking.
Her research interests in Film are divided between historical studies and an engagement with Contemporary World Cinema. Her PhD on Chantal Akerman was an attempt to broaden the critical boundaries within which the director's films had been previously discussed, considering not only her status as a 'woman' and 'independent' filmmaker but also her identities as 'Belgian' and 'Jewish'. Aspects of this thesis have been published in various edited collections, and from it have grown projects around the contradictions of national cinema, independent practice and women filmmakers (see Bibliography for details).
Her recent research and publications have encompassed each of these areas. With Gillian Helfield she is co-editor of the collection: 'Representing the Rural: Space, Place and Identity in Films about the Land'. This book offers a critical introduction to issues raised by the many, varied films that take the land as their setting. The essays here consider the ways in which once the urban space is displaced by the rural, so our understanding of cinema's use of modernity, the national, post-colonialism and the post-modern is transformed.
Her most recent book on British woman film-maker Sally Potter, published 2008, offers the first book length survey of a director who uses song, dance, performance and poetry to expand our experience of cinema beyond the audiovisual.
She was Screen correspondent for the 'Créteil Festival de films de femmes' from 1992 - 1998, (writing an annual review) and she has been part of the editorial advisory committee for the magazine Vertigo ( Vertigomagazine.co.uk ).
Current projects arise from her interest in the film-art axis of influence. This is a long term project on films made for and exhibited in the space of the gallery that explores how these films might challenge theorizations of narrative, time and spectatorship in both film studies and art theory.
Papers In 2018
Semester Two:
MFCO408 A topic in Cinema, Gender and Sexuality
Publications
Fowler, C. (2008). Sally Potter. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 168p.
Fowler, C. (2010). Cinema that stays at home: The inexportable films of Belgium's Gaston Schoukens, Edith Kiel and Jan Vanderheyden. Screen, 51(3), 256-271. doi: 10.1093/screen/hjq015
Fowler, C., & Helfield, G. (Eds.). (2006). Representing the rural: Space, place, and identity in films about the land. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 384p.
Fowler, C. (2008). Into the light: Re-considering off-frame and off-screen space in gallery films. New Review of Film & Television Studies, 6(3), 253-267. doi: 10.1080/17400300802418578
Fowler, C. (2006). Symphonie paysanne: An embodied and embedded picturing of the land. In C. Fowler & G. Helfield (Eds.), Representing the rural: Space, place, and identity in films about the land. (pp. 135-149). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Authored Book - Research
Fowler, C. (2008). Sally Potter. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 168p.
Edited Book - Research
Fowler, C., & Helfield, G. (Eds.). (2006). Representing the rural: Space, place, and identity in films about the land. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 384p.
Chapter in Book - Research
Fowler, C. (2006). Symphonie paysanne: An embodied and embedded picturing of the land. In C. Fowler & G. Helfield (Eds.), Representing the rural: Space, place, and identity in films about the land. (pp. 135-149). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Fowler, C., & Helfield, G. (2006). Introduction. In C. Fowler & G. Helfield (Eds.), Representing the rural: Space, place, and identity in films about the land. (pp. 1-16). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Fowler, C. (2006). Spending time with (a) celebrity: Sam Taylor-Wood's video portrait of David Beckham. In S. Holmes & S. Redmond (Eds.), Framing celebrity: New directions in celebrity culture. (pp. 241-252). London: Routledge.
Journal - Research Article
Fowler, C., & Kambuta, R. (2011). Extreme human makeovers: Supernanny, the unruly child, and adulthood in crisis. Lit, 22(3), 262-276. doi: 10.1080/10436928.2011.596389
Fowler, C., & Voci, P. (2011). Brief encounters: Theorizing screen attachments outside the movie theatre. Screening the Past, 32. Retrieved from http://www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/
Fowler, C. (2010). Cinema that stays at home: The inexportable films of Belgium's Gaston Schoukens, Edith Kiel and Jan Vanderheyden. Screen, 51(3), 256-271. doi: 10.1093/screen/hjq015
Fowler, C. (2008). Into the light: Re-considering off-frame and off-screen space in gallery films. New Review of Film & Television Studies, 6(3), 253-267. doi: 10.1080/17400300802418578
Journal - Research Other
Voci, P., & Fowler, C. (2011). Screen attachments: Introduction [Editorial]. Screening the Past, 32. Retrieved from http://www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/an-introduction/
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract
Fowler, C. (2011). Remembering cinema 'elsewhere': Introspection in gallery films. Proceedings of the Screen Cultures Conference. Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/languagescultures/screencultures.html
Fowler, C. (2008). Sally Potter and other women artists. Proceedings of the 1970s British Culture Conference. Retrieved from http://www.1970sproject.co.uk/events/panelorder.php
Fowler, C. (2008). Introspective and circumspective histories of the cinema in contemporary gallery films. In C. Fowler & R. Simmons (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (Vol. 1: Refereed Abstracts). (pp. 28). Dunedin, New Zealand: Department of Film, Media and Communication, University of Otago. [Abstract]
Fowler, C. (2007). Taking it and faking it: Performances of the self in recent gallery films. Proceedings of the Cultural Transformations Research Network Annual Symposium. Dunedin, New Zealand: Division of Humanities, University of Otago. Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/research/networks/transformations/
Fowler, C. (2006). An exploration of the influencing factors that might encourage successful learners. In R. Spronken-Smith (Ed.), Proceedings of the Spotlight on Teaching at Otago Conference. (pp. 26). Dunedin, New Zealand: HEDC, University of Otago. [Abstract]
Conference Contribution - Verbal presentation and other Conference outputs
Fowler, C. (2011, September). Slow cinema and other temporalities of viewing. Verbal presentation at the World Cinema Now: Second Biennial Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
Fowler, C. (2011, July). Following cinema's digital passage: Through the museum. Verbal presentation at the Moving Image and Institution Conference: Cinema and the Museum in the 21st Century, Cambridge, UK.
Fowler, C. (2010, November-December). The moving image's passage from actuality to potentiality in the gallery film. Verbal presentation at the XVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand: Cinema, Modernity and Modernism, Sydney, Australia.
Fowler, C. (2010, February). Beyond the visible: Remaking the cinema's past in the gallery. Verbal presentation at the Cinema in the Digital Age Symposium, Wellington, New Zealand.
Fowler, C. (2010, March). Do I add to the images in movies? Pensiveness and the moving image in gallery films. Verbal presentation at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference, Los Angeles, California.
Fowler, C. (2009, July). The passage between images: The wandering woman from Maya Deren to recent gallery films. Verbal presentation at the 19th International Screen Studies Conference: Screen Theorizing Today, Glasgow, UK.
Fowler, C. (2008, June). Re-thinking film history, re-making cinema in the gallery space. Verbal presentation at the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, Budapest, Hungary.
Fowler, C. (2007, October). Back to the future: Film history revisited in the gallery film. Verbal presentation at the Glasgow School of Art International Interdisciplinary Conference, Glasgow, Scotland.
Fowler, C. (2007, August). Genre and the gaze. Verbal presentation at the Department of Media, Film and Communication One Day Symposium on Genre, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Fowler, C. (2006, November). Into the light: Revealing the edges of the frame in gallery films. Verbal presentation at the XIIIth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia.
