Film Studies at UBC

Teaching Interests/Courses Taught Last Five years

• FIST 200 Intro to Canadian Cinema
• FIST 210 Silent Cinema
• FIST 334 Studies in Documentary
• FIST 336 Studies in European Cinema
• FIST 430 Studies in Auteurism
• FIST 500 Research Methods
• Arts One Program

Selected Publications

Genre and Cinema: Ireland and Transnationalism, ed. Brian McIlroy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

A Vision of the Orient: The Texts, Intertexts and Contexts of  Madame Butterfly, eds. Jonathan Wisenthal, Sherill Grace, Melinda Boyd, Brian McIlroy and Vera Micznik  (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland (Richmond, B.C.: Steveston Press, 2001).

Auteur/provocateur: The Films of Denys Arcand, eds. Andre Loiselle and Brian McIlroy (Westport, CT.: Praeger, 1995).

Irish Cinema: An Illustrated History (Dublin: Anna Livia Press, 1988)

World Cinema 2: Sweden (London Flicks Books, 1986).

Professional Service (selected)

Chair, Film Studies Program, 1997-99, 2004-07.
External Reviewer (University of Toronto’s Cinema Studies Program, 2005; Brock University Communications, Popular Culture and Film MA program, 2008).
Juror, SSHRC Raymond Klibansky Prize (2006)
BA Film Studies Advisor, 2002-2006; MA  Film Studies Advisor, 1989-2006.
Tenure and Promotion reviewer (Carleton University, Boston University, North Carolina State University)
Book and manuscript reviewer for Minnesota University Press, Syracuse University Press, Oxford University Press. 

Recent Graduate MA Thesis Supervisions:

Brent Strang (2010) "The Postmortem Western: From Unforgiven to No Country For Old Men"

Renee Penney (2010) "Desperately Seeking Redundancy: Romantic Comedy and The Queer Festival Audience"

Katherine Barcasy, “Profit and Production: Jane Austen’s Pride and Pejedice on Film” (2008)

Richard Colin Tait, “Assassin Nation: Theorizing the Conspiracy Film in the Early 21st Century” (2007)

Jennie Carlsten, "A Cinema of Resistance, A Resistance of Cinema: On the Limits and Possibilities of Northern Ireland's Commemorative Cinema" (2005)

Brock Poulin, "Dark Time(s): Non-Linear Narratives in the Postmodern Film Noir" (2005)

 

Teaching Interests/Courses Taught Recently:

• FIST 200: Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1960
• FIST 436: American Cinema after 1960
• FIST 336: European Cinema
• FIST 331: Film Theory
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: Film Sound and Music
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: Contemporary Film Theory
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: Zizek
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: History, Memory and Film
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: Film Violence
• FIST 534: Graduate Seminar: Film Melodrama

Selected Recent and Forthcoming Publications:

• "Torture Tunes: Tarantino, Popular Music and New Hollywood Ultraviolence." Music and Moving Image 2.2 (Summer 2009).
• "Uncanny Memories: Stan Douglas, Subjectivity and the Cinema." Scope: an online journal of film and tv studies 12 (October 2008).
• “Desublimating Desire: Courtly Love and Catherine Breillat.” Journal for Cultural Research 14.1 (January 2010).
• "Visible Violence in Kiki Smith’s Life Wants to Live." Journal of Medical Humanities 25.1 (Spring 2004).
• "Killing Bill: Rethinking Feminism and Film Violence." Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Eds. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007.
• "‘I am awake in the place where women die’: Violent Death in the art of Abigail Lane and Jenny Holzer." Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender and Violence. Eds. Annette Burfoot and Susan Lord. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2006.
• "Ethical violence: suicide as authentic act in the films of Michael Haneke." The Cinema of Michael Haneke: Europe Utopia. Eds. Ben McCann and David Sorfa. London, UK: Wallflower Press, 2010.
• "The Scream of Rape: Bruno Dumont's Twenty-Nine Palms." Rape in Art Cinema. Ed. Dominique Russell. London, UK: Continuum Press, 2010.

Teaching Interests/Courses Taught Recently:

• FIST 200: Intro to Canadian Cinema
• FIST 300: Cult Cinema
• FIST 331: Film Theory
• FIST 534b: Seminar in Film Studies: David Cronenberg
• DRAM 201: Modern and Contemporary Drama
• DRAM 300: Theory of Performance and Dramaturgy
• THTR445: From Stage to Screen

Selected Publications:

Mathijs, Ernest (2008), The Cinema of David Cronenberg: From Baron of Blood to Cultural Hero. London: Wallflower Press. 317 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest and Xavier Mendik (eds) (2007). The Cult Film Reader. London/New York: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill. 549 pages.

Barker, Martin and Ernest Mathijs (eds) (2007). Watching The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s World Audiences. New York: Peter Lang. 297 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest (ed) (2006), The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, London: Wallflower Press.. 341 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest and Murray Pomerance (eds) (2006). From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. New York/Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. 403 pages.

Barker, Martin, Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik (2006), ‘Menstrual Monsters: The Reception of the Ginger Snaps Cult Horror Franchise, Film International, 21 (4/3), 68-77.

Mathijs, Ernest (2005), ‘Bad Reputations: the Reception of Trash Cinema’, Screen, 46 (4), 451-472.

Mathijs, Ernest (2004), ‘Nobody is Innocent: Cinema and Sexuality in Contemporary Belgian Culture’, Social Semiotics, 14 (1), 85-101.

Mathijs, Ernest and Janet Jones (eds.) (2004). Big Brother International: Format, Critics and Publics. London: Wallflower Press. 261 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest and Xavier Mendik (eds) (2004). Alternative Europe; European Exploitation and Underground Cinema Since 1945. London: Wallflower Press. 269 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest (ed.) (2004), The Cinema of the Low Countries, London: Wallflower Press. 266 pages.

Mathijs, Ernest (2003), ‘AIDS References in the Critical Reception of David Cronenberg: It May Not Be Such a Bad Disease after All’, Cinema Journal, 42 (4), 29-45

Mathijs, Ernest (2002), ‘Big Brother and Critical Discourse: the Reception of Big Brother Belgium’, Television and New Media, 3 (3), 311-322.

I have also contributed several dozen entries to the encyclopedia 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 100 European Horror Films, 101 Horror Films You Must See Before You Die, 101 Science-Fiction Films You Must See Before You Die, 501 Movie Directors, and 501 Movie Stars.

Professional Service (Selected):

BA and MA advisor (Spring 2008 and Spring 2009)

Chair of the editorial board of Participations, online Journal for Audience and Reception Research (www.participations.org) (2003-ongoing).

Editor of the book series: Contemporary Cinema (Editions Rodopi): www.centreforcinemastudies.com (with Steven Jay Schneider) (2003-ongoing).

Editor of the book series: Cultographies (Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press): www.cultographies.com (with Jamie Sexton) (2005-ongoing).

Recent Graduate MA Thesis Supervisions:

Brenda Cromb, “Ambivalent Passion: Pedro Almodovar’s Postmodern Melodrama’s”

Andrew deWaard, “Andre Malraux and the Intertextual Museum: towards a Cultural Economy of Intermediality”

Graeme Krautheim, “Subjectivity, Pornography, and the Construction of Comfort: Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter and Seed of Evil”

Project outline: Image, music, and the aesthetic heritage of interactive digital media

Do we recognize the aesthetic traditions of cinema in a new world of digital and interactive media? This project examines how established formal conventions of the moving image persist in newer forms of media. Specifically, I ask how visual representations of popular music in the video game genre known as 'rhythm games' (i.e. Rock Band; Guitar Hero) are central to the user’s comprehension of game goals and structure interactivity by way of digital media’s reliance upon a longer tradition of visual representations of popular music in film and television, specifically documentary. The uniqueness of this particular form of interactive digital media is the explicitness with which the old and the new co-exist in a video game which is both a participant in, and a receptacle for, the visual culture of popular music. The project is informed by a cluster of inter-related theories on the relationship between digital media and ‘older’ regimes of audiovisual representation, and ideas on ‘re-uncovering’ cultural history through acts of, and references to, connoisseurship and collecting. At the core are two concepts concerned with the historical mediation of culture: the concept of residual media (media once thought obsolete that find new use), and the theory of remediation, which posits “what is in fact new [about new media] is the particular way in which each innovation rearranges and reconstitutes the meaning of earlier elements.”