IAMHIST Conference Wins High Praise

“Race and Ethnicity in the Media” was the theme for the biennial conference of IAMHIST (International Association for Media History) that was co-sponsored by UC and the American Jewish Archives of Hebrew Union College. Held July 20-23 at the Marriott Kingsgate Conference Center, the meeting attracted scholars from more than ten countries.

IAMHIST is the major international scholarly organization dealing with the history of film, radio, television, and the press. Tom Sakmyster, professor of history and program committee chair, observed that his group worked “to provide a balance in terms of media (a focus on film, but also attention to television, radio, and the press) and historical versus contemporary topics. Many of the papers were highly original and provocative and will doubtless be published.”

Highlights included “Opening the Lens, Turning a Blind Eye,” a presentation by Raye Farr of the United States Holocaust Museum and a discussion of “Islamism and Blasphemy” with film clips from

Submission

, the documentary that caused controversy in the Netherlands and led to the assassination of the film’s director. A presentation on World War II American film propaganda contained papers on Walt Disney cartoons and a documentary on Madison, Indiana, and a roundtable followed a presentation on the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre and the recently televised amateur video of the atrocity. Among the topics discussed in conference panels were Israeli cinema, Dutch television, colonial filmmaking in Africa, newsreels, film images of the Japanese-American incarceration, anti-Semitism, pacifism, and immigration.

Catherine Portuges, director of the interdepartmental program in film studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, summarized responses to the event: “IAMHIST was one of the most fruitful, best-organized, and hospitably welcoming conferences I’ve participated in. What a pleasure to enjoy the sustained exchange, intellectual generosity, and consistently high level of presentations—others will have difficulty living up to it.”