Jennifer Peterson’s research and teaching focus on the history and aesthetics of U.S. film, with a particular focus on the silent era and on documentary film. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before coming to CU Boulder in fall 2005, she taught at the University of California at Riverside, the University of Southern California, and the California Institute of the Arts. She also worked for nearly three years as an Oral Historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, and briefly in the Home Entertainment division at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Peterson recently co-curated an exhibition called “Silent Films and Bedroom Paintings,” which consists of three different programs of short nonfiction films from the 1910s (travelogues, industrials, nature films) running on three adjacent screens to form a tripych. The films are displayed in a room adjacent to a show of contemporary abstract paintings. The exhibition is at the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar in Lakewood, CO, May 22-August 31, 2008. See www.belmarlab.org for more information.
In addition to her interests in silent film, documentary, and historiography, Peterson has recently been researching location shooting and the image of nature in post-WWII Hollywood melodrama and film noir. She is currently completing work on a book entitled Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Silent Nonfiction Film, to be published by Duke University Press.
Peterson regularly teaches Film History I and II, as well as courses in Documentary Film, Melodrama, Film Noir, Women and Film, and British Cinema.
Publications include:
“‘Education Manufactured Wholesale’: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema in the 1920s,” in Learning with the Lights Off: A Reader in Educational Film, ed. Dan Streible, Marsha Orgeron, and Devin Orgeron (London: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).
Articles on Sherlock Jr., Freaks, and Blue Velvet in Fifty Key U.S. Films, ed. Sabine Haenni and John White (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2008).
“‘The Nation’s First Playground’: Travel Films and the American West, 1895-1920,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, edited by Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 79-98.
“Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film: Education in the School of Dreams,” in American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 191-213.
“The Competing Tunes of Johnny Guitar: Liberalism, Sexuality, Masquerade,” Cinema Journal vol. 35 no. 3 (spring 1996): 3-18. Reprinted in The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight Editions, 1998), pp. 321-339.
Film Studies Program, ATLAS room 329, Film Studies, , Campus Box 316, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0316. ph 303.492.7574 fx 303.492.1362
Jennifer Peterson’s research and teaching focus on the history and aesthetics of U.S. film, with a particular focus on the silent era and on documentary film. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before coming to CU Boulder in fall 2005, she taught at the University of California at Riverside, the University of Southern California, and the California Institute of the Arts. She also worked for nearly three years as an Oral Historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, and briefly in the Home Entertainment division at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
“‘Education Manufactured Wholesale’: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema in the 1920s,” in Learning with the Lights Off: A Reader in Educational Film, ed. Dan Streible, Marsha Orgeron, and Devin Orgeron (London: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).