New Histories of Hollywood Roundtable
Denise McKenna
Shelley Stamp
Kate Fortmueller
Luci A MarzolaStudying Hollywood Luci Marzola (moderator): In the earliest days of film studies, historians often had little more to work with than oral histories, incomplete collections of periodicals, and, sometimes, the films themselves. But it could be argued that film historians these days are often presented with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to access to archival materials from the Margaret Herrick Library to the Warner Bros. Archive to the Media History Digital Library—just to name a few. With this improved access both through digital sources and through the increased availability of motion picture collections at archives and libraries, what are the sources that we are still looking for? What issues of access and availability do you see affecting historians of the future? Are there any potential dangers in the proliferation of archival research? Kate Fortmueller: The increased digital availability of archival materials has been great for research and teaching alike. I remember scrolling through the microfiche of Photoplay and other fan publications at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library to find articles featuring Edith Head for a seminar paper in grad school. When I finally revisited that research last year, the Media History Digital Library was an invaluable resource that helped me reexamine a lot of sources. 1 As researchers, we all have limited time and money, and digital archives help economize. In general, however, the sources that are digitally available don't always offer me much clarity into power struggles/differentials, how industry decisions get made, or how workers navigate the challenges of a creative industry. A tremendous portion of my recent research has been searching for As part of this issue on " The System Beyond the Studios, " I sought not only to give scholars an opportunity to publish work that looks at specific cases reassessing the history of Hollywood, but I also wanted to look more broadly at the state of the field of American film history. As such, I assembled a roundtable of scholars who have been studying Hollywood through myriad lenses for most of their careers. I wanted to know, from their perspective, what were the current and future threads to be taken up in the study of this central topic in cinema and media studies. The roundtable discussion focuses on innovative methods, sources, and approaches that give us new insights into the study of Hollywood. Stamp all participated while I moderated the conversation. It was conducted via email and Google docs in the fall of 2017. Each participant began by writing a brief response to a broad question on one topic – research, methodology, pedagogy, or the meaning of 'Hollywood.' These responses were then culled together and given follow up questions which were all placed in a Google drive folder. Over the course of two months, the participants added responses, provocations, and questions on each of the threads, while I added follow up questions to guide the discussion. When seen as a whole, this roundtable creates a snapshot of where the field of Hollywood history is at this moment. It is a moment rife with possibilities as more lenses are brought into film history and more and more archives become accessible or digitized. Yet it is also a moment in which we feel ever more responsible both in our research and in our teaching to make the lessons of the past resonant with the present and into the future.
