John Powers, an assistant professor of film and media studies in Arts & Sciences at WashU, has won the 2024 Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).
Powers received the honor for “Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture,” which examines how the avant garde embraced the material resources of small-gauge media technologies — such as the Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories and low-budget optical printers — and invested them with meanings and values adjacent to those of semiprofessional film culture.
Founded in 1959, SCMS is the leading U.S. scholarly organization dedicated to promoting a broad understanding of film, television and related media through research and teaching grounded in the contemporary humanities tradition. The group represents nearly 3,000 scholars in over 500 institutions located in 38 nations. The annual SCMS Awards, launched in 1971, honor the year’s best in cinema and media studies scholarship, teaching and professional service.
