Rebecca A. Sheehan - American Avant-Garde Cinemas Philosophy of the In-Between

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sheehan, Rebecca, 1979 author.

Title: American avant-garde cinemas philosophy of the in-between / Rebecca A. Sheehan.

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |

Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019035353 (print) | LCCN 2019035354 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190949709 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190949716 (paperback) |

ISBN 9780190949730 (epub) | ISBN 9780190949723 | ISBN 9780190949747

Subjects: LCSH: Experimental filmsUnited StatesHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.E96 S475 2020 (print) |

LCC PN1995.9.E96 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/684dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035353

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019035354

For my parents, Wanda and Dan, without whose love for me this book would have never come to be.

The concept of the in-between which centers this book also describes its evolution. The genesis of this project spans the time between my graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and my current academic position at California State University, Fullerton; and it stretches between the East Coast (Philadelphia and Cambridge), where I first fell in love with American avant-garde cinema at a Hollis Frampton retrospective at Princeton University in the fall of 2004, and the West Coast (Los Angeles), where I have been constantly awed and energized by an embarrassment of avant-garde and experimental film riches. The book is also marked by my transitions from student to teacher and back again, as my own students have taught me to see familiar films anew. As I have moved and thought between these places and perspectives, several people have been especially important to this project.

D. N. Rodowick has been an intellectual inspiration since I first read Deleuzes Time Machine in graduate school. Imprints of the impact his thinking has had on mine are everywhere evident in this book. His mentorship has provided me with direction, resources, and community when I needed those things most. I am truly grateful for his feedback on this project at all stages and for his belief in its importance to the field. Charles Bernstein welcomed my unorthodox investigations into the intersections of poetics, philosophy, and cinema from the get-go. His early guidance and interest in the project were crucial to this book. Tim Corrigan has inspired me as a mentor who has never wavered in his support of my career and publications. I constantly aspire to be for my students what Tim has been for me. Benjy Kahan has cheered this project constantly, pushing me to submit the book proposal and providing encouragement and support at every turn. His generosity as an editor and friend is exceeded only by the boisterousness of his laughter, which also kept this project going. I am thankful for Brian Prices perceptive comments and suggestions in his review of the book proposal which buoyed my revisions and pushed my thinking through several lines of philosophical inquiry. Mark Toscanos archival and technical expertise and brilliance were essential to the late stages of this book. Finally, I am grateful to my editor at Oxford, Norm Hirschy, who shepherded this project to completion with enthusiasm and kindness.

This book is also situated between the two very different universities where I taught while writing it: Harvard and California State University, Fullerton. Students on both campuses constantly inspired me with fresh insights that transformed the classroom into a laboratory of serious thought about the philosophizing capabilities of experimental form and aesthetics. Several of them deserve special thanks: Gibran Rubio, for teaching me everything I needed to know about sound in Wavelength; Svetlana Gukina, for taking me to Disneyland and for describing slow cinema as truly liberating in a way that constantly returns to my mind; Liz Huber-Muoz, for her work on the East LA Chicano Art Collective, Asco, which made me feel less homesick at Harvard; Conor Reilley, for wandering into experimental cinema after giving up on an economics class and bringing with him delightful responses to Pat ONeills shiny objects; Lawrence Wang, for brilliant insights into everything from Claude Shannon to James Benning; Katherine Hart, for her tattoo of Jeanne Dielmans scissors and her defense of Window Water Baby Moving; Becca Voelcker, for being a model of energy, gratitude, and humor.

A number of communities and friends offered constant encouragement for this book in direct and indirect ways. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2012, my passion for and thinking about experimental film has been fed and fueled by the many films and filmmakers introduced to me by LA Film Forum, REDCATs experimental film screenings curated by Brnice Reynaud and Steve Anker, the Echo Park Film Center, and experimental programming at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The Huntington Library gave me the peace, quiet, and air-conditioning necessary to finish the manuscript. I am grateful for the Huntingtons extreme generosity with its resources and for the ideas sparked by strolls through its gardens. During my time as a College Fellow and then a VAP at Harvard, the Harvard Film Archive also fed the ideas in this book. Special thanks to Eric Rentschler and Robb Moss at Harvard for making possible the visiting position that gave me precious time to write. At Harvard, Heidi Blisss expert ability to procure films from archives all over the country gave me vital chances to see (and also re-see!) several of the films featured here. Kate Rennebohm and the Film-Philosophy SIG at SCMS provided a community of kindred intellectual spirits that helped push this book to completion. My friend and CSUF colleague, Monica Hanna, with whom I co-edited Border Cinema, lent me the optimism and taught me many of the practical tools to finish this project. At CSUF, Robert Davis, Tim Maloney, Heather Osborne-Thompson, Robert Engels, Ed Fink, and Garry Hart supported the production of this book in ways material and immaterial. My carpool companion and SLE sibling, Hunter Hargraves, was essential for helping me think through problems and ideas in the midst of Tuesday traffic on the I-5. Pooja Rangan, who pushed me off the diving board of publication, deserves thanks for getting me here and beyond.