3: Film & History
Interview with Deborah Carmichael, Associate Editor, October 2007
Play audio (approximately 30 minutes)
This installment of Periodical Radio is about Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. This semi-annual scholarly publication of the Historians Film Committee publishes research on the depiction of history in film and the impact of film on history. The journal's content is described as follows on their web site, www.filmandhistory.org :
Film & History often contains the following types of articles:
1. Analysis of individual films and/or television programs from a historical perspective; viewing the films or programs as historical artifacts,
2. Survey of documents related to the production of films, how films move from initial ideas to the finished screen version,
3. Analysis of history as explored through film, as in using film critically in the classroom.
They also describe, and I see from the issues I've reviewed, that films examined in Film & History may be documentaries or features. A recent issue includes articles on the historical inaccuracy of medieval arms and armor in contemporary film, the depiction of the Alamo in film, teachers' use of the movies Glory and Amistad to teach history, and the role of movies in the antiwar debate in the 1930's. Each issue begins with a message of several pages from the editor about news of the organization, including conferences, awards, and members' accomplishments. The last third or so of the journal is devoted to reviews of films and books.
Each issue of Film & History runs about 90 pages, and is printed in black & white on heavy white paper. Covers are of colored card stock and feature illustrations depicting the theme of the issue. Recent themes include War, Sports, and Latin America. Every issue includes advertisements for scholarly books, and notices of upcoming conferences.
Film & History is indexed in America: History & Life. Articles from the journal are available in full text in several databases, including Project MUSE, EBSCOhost's Communications and Mass Media Complete, and ProQuest 5000.
The publishers of Film & History have an interesting way of dealing with manuscripts that do not fit within the pages of the journal. Each year they publish a CD-ROM containing refereed and approved articles beyond those published in the journal.
To learn more about Film & History, I have as my guest Associate Editor Deborah Carmichael, a professor in the Department of English at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK.
Steve: Deborah, welcome to Periodical Radio.
Dr. Carmichael: Well, thank you.
Steve: In a nutshell, what is Film & History about?
Dr. Carmichael: We’re about a lot of things, it’s hard to do a nutshell. Our main goal is get information, scholarship out to an audience of film students, film scholars, historians, students of American culture and other cultural studies. We do it through the journal and through some electronic publications, as well.
Steve: Film & History is interdisciplinary. Which disciplines are represented in the pages of your journal?
Dr. Carmichael: In addition to historians and film students, we get contributions from authors in sociology, psychology, cultural studies, women’s studies. A wide variety, really. Obviously film touches our lives in so many ways, as does television.
Steve: I was going to ask “Who are your readers?” and that in a way answers that question. But are all of your readers academics, or does the journal reach a broader audience?
Dr. Carmichael: In addition to the academic audience we do have subscribers who are actually in the film industry. They can reference some of the articles and get some inspiration for ideas and areas that they might want to explore in terms of screenplays, for instance.
Steve: Who are your writers?
Dr. Carmichael: We receive submissions from scholars all around the world. We have quite a large number of international authors, all over the globe, really.
Steve: At the top of the show, I quoted from the journal's web site to describe the types of articles published in Film & History. Could you give us an example of viewing a film as a historical artifact?
Dr. Carmichael: Okay, I’ll give you an example of some of our thematic issues.
Steve: Okay.
Dr. Carmichael: Each year we focus on a particular theme, and often times it is a historical era. For instance, we looked at the medieval period in film, which is something that may not readily come to mind. We received a lot of articles that talked about international cinema, ways Joan of Arc has been represented on film, ways in which King Arthur, someone we’re all very familiar with, and grown up with different stories about him, and ways to look at how film has represented those figures, those stories.
Steve: How about an example of how a film is produced?
Dr. Carmichael: Produced meaning?
Steve: The process of creating a film.
Dr. Carmichael: We look more to the film itself, as opposed to the production. We do have some contributors who will be looking at film history in terms of the studio system, for instance. When the films were controlled pretty much solely by the studios, they controlled production, distribution and an exhibition. So we do get some film historians who would be speaking to that kind of topic.
Steve: I see, the process of production the films. How about an example of using film in the classroom?
Dr. Carmichael: Actually we’d love to have more contributors who give us information about how they use film in the classroom, but we try to include as often as possible articles that do address the idea of pedagogy in terms of film use in classrooms. For example, we had an article on The Natural, and the author described how using that film was a way to get a class of mainly young men to start thinking in terms of some of the ideas she was trying to work with in terms of cultural studies. It was a film about baseball, they could immediately relate to the concepts she was trying to work with in her class.
Steve: You teach film studies at Oklahoma State, is that correct?
Dr. Carmichael: I’ve taught mainly introduction to film.
Steve: Do you use films in your classes?
Dr. Carmichael: Yes, for sure. I have used film in literature classes, for instance. I’m in the English department here. I use lots of film in literature classes, some films in composition classes and of course obviously in introduction to film. That class is important because it’s a good first step in getting undergraduates to understand film language and technique and the way that the director and cinematographer have made choices in how we see this story that’s being told. There are deliberate choices in terms of whether we something in close up versus something in long shot, for instance. So it’s a way for students to begin to evaluate what they see. Obviously we’re becoming more and more a visual culture, with film on the internet, for instance. So it’s becoming more and more important for undergraduates in particular to start learning there is a language, and there are techniques that are affecting what we’re seeing and how we’re going to respond to what we see.
Steve: I'd like to ask a basic question about terminology. Why is the term "film" used, rather than "cinema" or "movies" or "motion pictures"?
Dr. Carmichael: They’re all interchangeable, really. Can I tell you why the journal was originally titled Film & History versus “Cinema and History”?
Steve: Certainly.
Dr. Carmichael: I don’t have any answer for that, actually. So they can be used interchangeably. Sometimes if you hear motion pictures it may suggest a more industrial perspective rather than a more analytical film textual kind of approach.
Steve: But they’re essentially synonyms.
Dr. Carmichael: Sure, yes.
Steve: Deborah, I'd like to ask a few questions about your work as an associate editor of Film & History. What originally drew you to film studies?
Dr. Carmichael: Like a lot of people, probably just a love of film. As I started doing course work here at Oklahoma State I realized that I had the possibility to study not only literature but also film. Because I had that opportunity to study with people like Peter Rollins, who’s our editor-in-chief of Film & History, and also people like Leonard Leff who has published a lot of work in film. So I had the opportunity to study with people who were particularly knowledgeable and particularly exciting to study with.
Steve: My next question was how did you land a position as associate editor? It sounds that might have been an outgrowth of those relationships.
Dr. Carmichael: Yes, that’s exactly right. Because I had worked with Dr. Rollins in course work, out of that grew my opportunity to start working with the journal. I started working with him in 1999, so it’s been a few years now.
Steve: Just what does an associate editor do, as opposed to an editor-in-chief?
Dr. Carmichael: The editor-in-chief is responsible for all the workings of the journal, to some extent. My role in particular is to review the submission we receive, to coordinate the peer reviews that go on for those, and then as journal is going through the process of formatting and going to press, I’m the liaison between the graphics people, the printer, and things like that.
Steve: Can you talk a little bit more about that process of choosing the peer reviewers, that process of how you choose them and what they do?
Dr. Carmichael: For the journal we are thematic, so of course the first thing is we get hundreds of submissions so we have to at least temporarily set aside those that aren’t working within the theme we’ve chosen for the year. We usually have a guest editor who helps work with the peer review process, and then later with the editing process for the actual print journal. In addition to that, because we get some articles that are excellent but aren’t appropriate to the theme, or perhaps are on a theme we just don’t have the physical space to print them all, we began a CD-ROM series. Obviously on CD-ROM we don’t have those kinds of space limitations we do in print. So it was a way for us to again give authors the opportunity to get their work out so that researchers and students have an opportunity to see the material, even though it didn’t fit within our thematic range of the print version. That’s why we began our CD-ROM series in 1999.
Steve: And that’s an annual?
Dr. Carmichael: We have a series we try to get out annually. In truth we’re not right on the button in terms of getting out what’s in a year, depending on technical problems and time constraints. Most of our staff are volunteer, so things don’t always go as scheduled.
Steve: I was curious about something about the CD-ROM. It’s a somewhat unusual way of a journal dealing with worthy manuscripts that don’t fit within the pages of the journal. The journal itself is indexed in America: History & Life, a leading index for history. Are the articles on the CD-ROM indexed there, as well?
Dr. Carmichael: Personally, I don’t have an answer for that, because it’s not something I deal with, in terms of who we’re indexed with and who we’re not.
Steve: Okay.
Dr. Carmichael: The main goal is we want authors to have an opportunity to find a venue to publish, and this is a way we can do it without the kinds of space limitations of a print journal. There are usually twenty to thirty articles in each CD-ROM we put out. A plus to all this is someone doing research on a specific topic, a specific director, for instance, has the opportunity to do a word search through all of the documents on the CD-ROM, which is similar to the first CD-ROM we worked with, which was the first 26 years of the journal. Again, someone who’s searching for a very specific topic or director can word search twenty-six years of the journal. That’s an added plus in terms of people trying to do research and looking for very specific references to particular films, for instance.
Steve: It sounds like a wonderful tool, but libraries seem to have a problem dealing with it. I was looking in WorldCat, which is a catalog of catalogs, and noticed that over 300 libraries subscribe to your journal, but only 10 libraries are listed as having your CD-ROM. Apparently libraries don’t know quite how to deal with it. Do you perceive that as a problem that should be addressed?
Dr. Carmichael: I’m not savvy in terms of library science. My only experience is here at OSU, and the CD-ROMs are cataloged and kept with other media like microfilm, microfiche, DVDs, VHS. So there’s a specific department that deals with electronic resources. I can’t speak to it as a problem. It’s obviously a new approach, so as time goes on and people are more comfortable with using it, I think that may be a part of it, in terms of use of the library, it’s certainly a way to grab the attention of your undergraduate students, because it is an electronic resource as opposed to a hard copy resource. The word searchable capabilities come into play in terms of being able to search numerous articles.
Steve: A little bit earlier you mentioned that you have to rely on volunteer work. I wanted to ask a couple of questions about associate editors and the editorial advisory board. What compensation, or what reward is there for the people when they do that work?
Dr. Carmichael: The reward is we’re getting that information out to an audience. We’re not doing this in terms of trying to make a fortune at this. Our goal is to get good, solid film studies out there so people who are doing research, and people who are studying film and TV and media are able to have access to this information.
Steve: I think many people don’t realize that the editors of scholarly journals typically aren’t paid.
Dr. Carmichael: Again I can’t speak to other journals. For us it’s definitely a labor of love.
Steve: Some critics of the peer review process have said that work, that labor of love, isn’t compensated enough, especially in the rank and tenure process. Do you think that criticism is valid, in your opinion?
Dr. Carmichael: I’m not sure if I understand you question.
Steve: That in the rank and tenure process, academic promotion, that reviewing articles doesn’t count for as much as it should, given the importance of the work, and the energy that goes into it.
Dr. Carmichael: Hmm. Truthfully, it’s not something I’ve ever fully thought about, basically because it’s something you do because you want to get the information out there. I know that for instance our loyal people who contribute book reviews and film reviews, I know some of those are discounted as not being particularly good scholarship. But again, they’re helping get the word out about what’s available in film studies or media studies. So it’s a way of getting information out to an audience that needs to be aware of what’s available.
Steve: Very well. I can see the labor of love part is a very important piece.
Dr. Carmichael: Definitely, yes. You have to be passionate about what you’re doing, because obviously academics don’t make large salaries, generally. So certainly have to be passionate and love what you’re doing.
Steve: I noticed that the content of Film & History seems closely tied to the presentations at the Historian Film Committee’s conferences. Can you describe for us the relationship between the journal and the conferences?
Dr. Carmichael: The Film and History League, which is an umbrella for the journal and our other projects, sponsors biannual conferences. Out of the conferences we start first by producing CD proceedings. Then those who participated in a conference submit articles to us for the journal. In addition to people who have attended the conference, we take submissions from others who for whatever reason did not attend, and consider those as well for the journal. But because we have a pool of authors at the conference, it’s a very good way for us to get out the call that we’ll be doing issues on the topics of the conferences, based on things we feel are important to be discussed in film studies.
Steve: And you have a conference coming up very soon?
Dr. Carmichael: Yes, starting November 8 [2006] in Dallas, on the documentary tradition, which obviously can cover a lot of ground. About five hundred participants are coming to that conference. About a third of those are international participants, which is always exciting. The topics we used in the past, for instance “The American Presidency” or “The American West,” although the topic may be American, because we have so many international contributors, we had the chance to get a new perspective on how our American West or western genre is perceived in other countries. It’s a good opportunity to find different views and takes on different genres, or in this case this year the documentary tradition.
Steve: Of the conference themes over the years, do you have a personal favorite?
Dr. Carmichael: No, I can’t say that I do, because they’ve all been fabulous. We always draw such a large attendance, and scholars who are senior scholars as well as younger people who are just getting started in film studies. The quality of presentations is always so good that every conference is very exciting. It’s also a conference where you have a chance to sit down and speak with people working in areas you’re interested in. It’s very collegial. I’ve enjoyed them all.
Steve: Sounds very enjoyable. The American Historical Society established the John E. O'Connor Film Award in 1993. Who was John E. O'Connor?
Dr. Carmichael: We didn’t really go into the history, did we?
Steve: No.
Dr. Carmichael: John E. O’Connor and Martin Jackson are two historians who started Film & History in 1970, so there is a long history. In honor of all the work that John has done in film studies, in television studies, his work as a historian using film in the classroom, he was honored with the award from AHA.
Steve: What is the award, and how is it granted?
Dr. Carmichael: There’s a committee that screens films to decide who will receive the award. John O’Connor’s focus was on film and the use of history, how history is reflected or represented in film, how film can affect perceptions of history, and how film changes in terms of historic moments, as well.
Steve: So the award goes to a film maker?
Dr. Carmichael: Yes.
Steve: Film & History has been published for 36 years now, do you see it thriving into the future?
Dr. Carmichael: I think so, and I think part of it will be in terms of the kinds of things we’re exploring in electronic publication. We’ve been doing the CDs. The last CD we did included some film on the CD, so people who may not have access to some of the classic documentaries, for instance, would have a chance to see it because of the CD. On our last CD-ROM we had The Plow that Broke the Plains, a film that was sponsored by the federal government, and might not be available, so it gives people a chance to see it. We also had another film on the last CD, Goodbye, Billy: America Goes to War from 1917. Again, a film that was distributed for classroom use, not distributed theatrically, something many people have not had an opportunity to see. But it’s an excellent example of using archival materials to create film. Those kinds of opportunities where we can get film that people may not have access to out in electronic form along with the articles. On our web site, we have projects going on. We’re working on a filmography now for documentary films to tie in with our conference. We have Keith Wheelock, who’s taking on that project for us. We’ll have an extensive, fairly detailed filmography on documentary film. So we’re providing resources through the web site, as well, for film scholars. There are lots of different avenues, I think.
Steve: Looking into a crystal ball, do you think the journal will still be published on paper ten, twenty years from now?
Dr. Carmichael: I guess my crystal ball is cloudy. It would depend upon the demand from our subscribers and our readers. Do they prefer the print copy? Do they prefer something electronic online? A lot will depend upon what our readership really wants.
Steve: I see. I think all of our crystal balls are cloudy on that one.
Dr. Carmichael: Yes [laughs].
Steve: Deborah, is there anything that we haven’t addressed that you’d to add?
Dr. Carmichael: One thing I hope is that people will take a look at our web site at http://filmandhistory.org, so they can see a little more about the kinds of things we do in addition to publishing the journal. We have events like our conferences, we have teachers on the web site, like the filmography we’re working on. We have a lot of different projects going on at any one time, all of which hopefully are going to help people doing research in film, looking at film in terms of how it relates to our culture. We can be a help to them and their work.
Steve: Do those web resources require a subscription, or are they free to the public?
Dr. Carmichael: The filmography and things like that are just on the web site for anyone to use.
Steve: Deborah, thank you very much for being our guest on Periodical Radio.
Dr. Carmichael: Thank you, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to speak with you.
Steve: To explore Film & History on your own, visit their web site at www.filmandhistory.org. That's "and" spelled a-n-d, not an ampersand. If you would like to subscribe to Film & History, an individual subscription is $50. The address is Popular Culture Center, RR 3, Box 80, Cleveland, OK 74020. Thank you for listening to this installment of Periodical Radio. I'm your host, Steve Black.