Brenda Austin-Smith, Dr.

• FILM 2040 - The Documentary Film

I am a settler scholar originally from the Maritimes, who has studied and taught in B.C., Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Quebec (at Champlain College CÉGEP). I've designed and taught courses on Film and Affect, Film and the City, Cult Film, Women Filmmakers, the French New Wave, Pre-Code Hollywood, Teen Gross-Out Comedies, Film Theory, Documentary Film, and Television, among others. My teaching and research activities have run alongside public writing contributions, community board participation, and national service in academic unions, editorial boards, SSHRC adjudication and publication committees, and film and creative project juries. I recently completed eight years as Head of Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media.

• PhD (English Literature), University of Manitoba, 1992
• MA (English Literature), University of Victoria, 1982
• BA (English Literature), Acadia University, 1980

Research interests

• Film and feeling: audience studies; fandom; "tear-jerkers" and melodrama
• Cinephilia: movie love; collecting; obsession; cult film; film and media afterlives
• Adaptation: film and literature; remakes
• Acting and performance: film casting; stardom and types
• Cinema memory: ethnographies of movie-going; places, movies, and meaning

Research summary

Why and how do movies make us feel things? And how are these feelings connected to time and place as well as to the elements of the films that elicit these feelings? These are the questions that drive my research into movies and weeping, or on the kinds of films we sometimes call "guilty pleasures," or on the film scenes and sounds that burrow into our memories and stay there, conjuring up powerful feelings and associations between the past and the present of movie viewing.

Research affiliations/groups

• The Winnipeg film group
• African movie festival in Manitoba
• Film and media studies association of Canada (FMSAC)
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)
• The HoMER network: History of Movie Exhibition and Reception

• Austin-Smith, B. “Joaquin Phoenix: Ascendant.” Stellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010s. Ed. Steven Rybin. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. 2022: 17-33
• Austin-Smith, B. “She’s So Unusual: The Autist in Stranger Things.” On the Island: Autism in Film and Television. Pomerance, Murray, and R. Barton Palmer, eds. University of Texas Press. 2022: 107-117.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Room at the Top: Now, Voyager.” Special issue: “New Perspectives on Old Masters.” South Atlantic Review. 85.4 (Winter 2020): 181-197.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Hal Ashby: Gentle Giant.” The Other Hollywood Renaissance. Lennard, D., R. Barton Palmer and M. Pomerance, eds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. 2020: 26-43.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Cult Film and Gender.” Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, eds. The Routledge Companion to Cult Film. Taylor and Francis. 2020: 143-151.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Gene Hackman in The Conversation.” Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances Volume 1: America. Murray Pomerance, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. 2018: 178-187.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Secrets, Lies, and ‘Virtuous Attachments’: The Ambassadors and The 39 Steps.” Alfred Hitchcock and Henry James: The Men Who Knew Too Much. Griffin, Susan and Alan Nadel, eds. Oxford University Press, 35-47, 2012. Reprinted in Alfred Hitchcock: Critical Evaluations of Leading Filmmakers. Ed. Neil Badmington. Routledge, 2014.
• Austin-Smith, B. “Noting Performance in Three Films.” Theorizing Film Acting. Taylor, Aaron, ed. Routledge.19-32, 2012.
• Austin-Smith, B. “The Ethics of Murder: Trial as Performance in Maternal Melodrama.” Theatricality in Film. Loiselle, Andre and Jeremy Maron, eds. Toronto University Press, 102-115, 2012.
• Austin-Smith, B. and G. Melnyk, eds, and Introduction, The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 272 pp. 2010.

• 2022 - Certificate of Recognition for dedicated service as a member of the CAUT Executive Committee from May 2019-April 2022, University of Manitoba
• 2011 - University of Manitoba Faculty Association Roy Vogt Award for Exceptionally Meritorious Service, University of Manitoba
• 2010 - Award for Outstanding Achievement, Faculty of Arts, University of Manitoba
• 1994 - UTS Certificate of Excellence in Teaching Student/Teacher Recognition Award (Graduate Student recipient), University of Manitoba
• 1990 - Poetry Competition Award, Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia

• Board Member, Winnipeg Film Group
• Member, National Project Advisory Committee, Courage to Act Initiative. Ministry for Women and Gender Equality
• Member, Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Publications Committee of the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program
• President, Canadian Association of University Teachers (2019-2022)
• Member, founding Board of the African Movie Festival in Manitoba (AM/FM) (2018-present)