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Haidee Wasson, PhD

Associate Dean, Faculty Development and Inclusion, Fine Arts
Distinguished University Research Professor, Cinema


Haidee Wasson, PhD
Office: S-EV 2.739  
Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex,
1515 St. Catherine W.
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 4703
Email: Haidee.Wasson@concordia.ca

Education

PhD (McGill)


Haidee Wasson (PhD) is currently the Associate Dean of Faculty Relations and Inclusion in the Faculty of Fine Arts.  She brings a wealth of experience to this role, having previously served as Associate Dean, Research (Faculty of Fine Arts), Area Head and Graduate Program Director (Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia), and member of Faculty Council (Fine Arts), University Senate, and the Board of Governors, among other administrative and leadership roles.


Dr. Wasson was recently named a Distinguished Research Professor (2023) in recognition of her multiple international awards, and her ground-breaking and influential scholarship. She has published 5 books and dozens of articles, lecturing internationally on film and media history. She is currently working on a 5-year SSHRC funded project examining the important role of small format film technologies in seeding cultures of creativity across cultural and industrial sectors.


She previously taught in the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature Department, University of Minnesota and in the Visual and Environmental Studies Program, Harvard University.




 



Research interests

Emergent media, film technology, cultural institutions, film and media theory, feminism, film and media historiography.

Useful Cinema
Photo credit: Duke UP, 2011
Cinema's Military Industrial Complex
Photo credit: University of California Press
Everyday Movies: Portability and the Transformation of American Culture
Photo credit: University of California Press, 2021

Selected publications

Books:

Everyday Movies: Portable Projectors and the Transformation of American Film Culture (University of California, 2021). 274 pp.

 

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 379pp.

 

Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr. Charles Acland [Duke University Press, 2011] 386 pp. [Best Edited Collection – SCMS – honorable mention; Krasna-Krausz Book Awards 2012 – Finalist for Best Moving Image Book Award.]

Inventing Film Studies: A Genealogy of Studying Cinema (co-edited with Dr. Lee Grieveson) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) 446 pp.     

 

Museum Movies: MoMA and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) 314 pp. *Outstanding Academic Title 2005 (American Library Association)


Chapters in Books (select):

“Cinema and Industrial Design: New Media Ecologies and the Exhibition Film” in Films that Work Harder. Vinzenz Hediger, Florian Hoof, and Yvonne Zimmerman (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press) [essay submitted; in process] 

 

“The Military and American Cinema” [with Lee Grieveson] in Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 1-24.

 

“Experimental Viewing Protocols: Film Projection and the American Military,” Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018) 25-43.

 

“Verstärktes Licht und Moduliertes Sehen: Kinogeschichten vom Experimentieren mit  kleinen Bildschirmen” [Amplified Light and Modulated Looking: Cinema Histories of Small Screen Experimentation] in Oberflachen und Interfaces: Asthetik und Politik filmischer [Surfaces and Interfaces: Aesthetics and Politics of Filmic Images ed Ute Holl et al. (Munich: Finkverlag, 2017) [7,700 words]

“Researching Film Formats: The Quick Search and Slow Scholarship” for The ARCLIGHT Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities (Reframe Books: 2016) (www.projectarclight.org)

“Selling Machines: Portable Projectors and Advertising at the World’s Fair” in Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising eds. Nico De Klerk, Bo Florin, and Patrick Vonderau, eds (BFI, 2016) 54-70.

“The Elastic Museum” TheInternational Handbook of Museum Studies: Museum Media First Edition. Edited by Michelle Henning, (Wiley& Sons, 2015) 603-627.


"Big, Fast Museums / Small, Slow Movies: Film, Scale and the Art Museum" in Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr. Charles Acland (Duke University Press, 2011) 178-204. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977436/


Articles (select):

*“Documentary’s Exhibitionary Complex: Cinema, Industrial Design and Corporate Dreamworlds” Imago Vol VIII, no 1 (2017)

 

*”Entering the Movie Theater” [introduction to special issue on movie theaters] Film History: An International Journal. Vol 28, No 2 (2016) pp. v-xi.


“Verkaufsmaschinen. Film und filmische Techniken auf der New Yorker Weltausstellung 

1939/1940” Montage A/V (02/2015) 161-178. Trans. “Selling Machines: Portable Projectors and Advertising at the World’s Fair” in Nico De Klerk, Bo Florin, and Patrick Vonderau, eds. Films that Sell (BFI, 2016) 54-70.

“Formatting Film Studies” Film Studies 12 (Spring2015) 57 – 61.

 “Verkaufsmaschinen. Film und filmischeTechniken auf der New Yorker Weltausstellung 1939/1940” Montage A/V (02/2015)161-178.

“The Protocols of Portability” Film History vol. 25, No. 1-2 (2013): 236-247.

“Moving Images: Portable Histories of Film Exhibition” The International Encyclopedia of MediaStudies: Media History and the Foundations of Media Studies. John Nerone,ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) 367-384.

Suitcase Cinema” Cinema Journal (51.2) Winter 2012: 150-154.

"Introduction" [In Focus: Screen Technologies] Cinema Journal 51.2 (Winter 2012): 143-146. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977433/


"Roundtable on the History of Film Studies in Canada" (co-organized with Mike Zryd) Participants: Peter Morris, Kay Armatage, John Locke, Andre Gaudrault, Maurice Yacowar. Canadian Journal of Film Studies (20.1) Spring 2011: 117-137. http://www.filmstudies.ca/journal/pdf/cj-film studies201_history_canadian_film_studies_roundtable.pdf

"Small Discipline, Big Ideas" Synoptique (May 2010) http://www.synoptique.ca/core/articles/wasson_haidee_dudley_andrew/

"Electric Homes! Automatic Movies! Efficient Entertainment!: Domesticity and the 16mm Projector in the 1920s" Cinema Journal 48.4 (Fall 2009): 1-21. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977442/

"Studying Movies at the Museum: The Museum of Modern Art and Cinema's Changing Object." in Inventing Film Studies, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Duke University Press, 2008) 121-148. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977437/

"Suitcase Cinema" trans as "Kofferkino: Zur Gestichte Kinematografischer Portabiität" [German] for Cargo: Film/Medien/Kultur 18, 2013: 38-41. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977432/

"Suitcase Cinema" Cinema Journal 51.2 (Winter 2012): 150-154. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977441/

Books

Cinema’s MilitaryIndustrial Complex, co-edited with Lee Grieveson (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2018) 379pp.

 

Useful Cinema, co-edited with Dr.Charles Acland [Duke University Press, 2011] 386 pp. [Best Edited Collection –SCMS – honorable mention; Krasna-Krausz Book Awards 2012 – Finalist for BestMoving Image Book Award.]

Inventing Film Studies: A Genealogy of StudyingCinema (co-edited withDr. Lee Grieveson) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) 446 pp.               

 

Museum Movies: MoMA and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2005) 314 pp. *Outstanding Academic Title 2005 (AmericanLibrary Association)



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