Miriam Hansen

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Miriam Hansen (28 April 1949 – 5 February 2011) was a

film historian
who made important contributions to the study of early cinema and mass culture.

Career

Born Miriam Bratu to Jewish parents, Arthur Egon Bratu and Ruth Bratu, in

Rutgers before moving to the University of Chicago, where she served as Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the time of her death.[1] She founded the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at that university.[1]

She is most known for her book Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film.

mass culture. She focused in particular on cinema as a mode of modernism, coining the term "vernacular modernism"[1] to explain how even the classical Hollywood cinema could be a popular form of modernism that served many cultures as a horizon for coming to grips with modernity. According to fellow University of Chicago professor Tom Gunning, she "provided the best of models for film studies at the moment that it moved from its pioneering focus on Grand Theory to a broader sense of a field that must include archival research, political perspectives, aesthetic awareness and theoretical ambition."[3]

She died of cancer on 5 February 2011 in Chicago at the age of 61.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Fox, Margalit (12 February 2011). "Miriam Hansen, a Scholar of Cinema, Dies at 61". New York Times. Retrieved 13 February 2011.
  2. .
  3. ^ Gunning, Tom (7 February 2011). "Tribute to Miriam Hansen". Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Retrieved 13 February 2011.

External links