The 2025 workshop will take place from June 15-28. Applications are now open and due January 13.

Developments in digital technology afford exciting new possibilities for conducting analysis and conveying arguments in a multimedia form about multimedia objects of study through works commonly known as ‘videographic essays.’ Jason Mittell and Catherine Grant will lead a two-week workshop at Middlebury College in Vermont from June 15 – 28, 2025, where participants will learn how to conceive and produce film & media criticism via digital sound and moving images.

The workshop will serve 15 participants, whose objects of study involve audio-visual media, especially film, television, and other new digital media forms. Participants should be scholars working in film & media studies or a related field – the workshop is appropriate for faculty, graduate students, or academic professionals. 

This workshop was first presented three times (in 2015, 2017 & 2018) under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 2019, we are presenting it as a tuition-driven program.

In the workshops, we engage with many key questions facing film and media scholarship in the digital age: How might the use of images and sounds transform the rhetorical strategies used by film & media scholars? How does such creative digital scholarship fit into the norms of contemporary academia? How might incorporating aesthetic strategies common to moving images reshape scholarly discourse? How do broader trends and developments in remix culture and copyright activism connect with new modes of film and media scholarship? In a workshop setting, we consider the theoretical foundation for such forms of digital scholarship, and experiment extensively with producing such work. The goal is to explore a range of approaches by using moving images as a critical language and to expand the expressive possibilities available to innovative humanist scholars.

Participants are not expected to have experience producing videos – the workshop is aimed at exploring the new format and stimulating new ideas. The workshop will strive to create a community of practice among participants, as well as connecting participants to a broader community of videographic critics and scholars.

Applications for the 2025 workshop will be due January 13, 2025 – participants will be notified about their acceptance by the beginning of February. Applications are now being accepted.