Kirsten Moana Thompson

Kirsten Moana Thompson (born 1964) is an interdisciplinary scholar of American and New Zealand/Pacific cinema and visual culture. Thompson's work in American film has focused on classical American cel animation[1] and the introduction of three strip Technicolor, on contemporary crime films and blockbuster[2] and special effects cinema.[3][4] Her work on Pacific cinema situates film production by American and Pacific filmmakers in broader cultural and visual contexts.[5] She has also published on American horror film[6] and German cinema.[7]

Education and career

Thompson's training in history, literature and media has shaped her interdisciplinary research and teaching. Thompson received her MA in English Literature with First Class Honors from Auckland University, New Zealand and her PhD from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1998 in Cinema Studies. She worked as Film Director and Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit for several years.[8] She then moved to New Zealand to take up the Directorship of the Film Program and was Professor of Film Studies at the School of English, Theatre, Film and Media Studies at University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. She is currently Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Program at Seattle University.

Career

Thompson's first sole authored book, Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium, examined a series of films made in the late nineties and first decade of the new century through Søren Kierkegaard's concept of dread, situating millennial cinema in philosophical,theological and cinematic traditions of anxieties about the future.[9][10] Through her readings of certain films like Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese, 1991) and Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992), Thompson offered new philosophical explanations for the long-standing cultural popularity of horror and apocalyptic cinema. Thompson's next book, Crime Films: Investigating the Scene, examined case studies of the crime, criminal and crime solver situating the detective film[11][12] and crime stories[13] within historical developments in criminology, the police force and forensic investigation. Reflecting her increasing interest in wider social and historical aspects of visual culture, her work considers the emergence of visual technologies of identification and corporeal mapping, linking them to policing, social control, and the emergence of modern identity.

Thompson's scholarly research continues her work on American cinema and visual culture with a particular focus on classical and contemporary American animation[14] and Color studies.[15][16] She is currently working on a book Color, Classical American Animation and Visual Culture which explores the historical, philosophical, and technological dimensions of colour in the cel animation of Walt Disney, the Fleischer Bros., MGM and other leading American animation studios.[17][18][19]

Books
  • Perspectives on German Cinema (Coeditor with Terri Ginsberg) NY: G.K.Hall, 1996.
  • Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007.
  • Crime Films: Investigating the Scene: London: Wallflower,2007.

References
  1. Wells, Paul (2002). Animation and America. Rutgers University Press. pp. 57–58.
  2. Thompson, Kirsten (2006). Scale, Spectacle and Movement: Massive Software and Digital Special Effects in The Lord of the Rings," in From Hobbits To Hollywood: Essays On Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings eds. Ernest Mathijs and Murray Pomerance. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 283–299. ISBN 978-9042020627.
  3. Prince, Stephen (2012). Digital Visual Effects: The Seduction of Reality. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. p. 88.
  4. Burgoyne, Robert (2010). Epic Film in World Culture. New York: Routledge. pp. 5. ISBN 978-0415990189.
  5. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (2014). "The Construction of a Myth: Bloody Mary, Aggie Grey and the Optics of Tourism". Journal of NZ and Pacific Studies. 2 (1): 5–19.
  6. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (2007). Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of the Millennium. Albany, NY: SUNY Press: Albany. ISBN 978-0791470442.
  7. Ginsberg, Terri and Kirsten Thompson, eds. (1996). Perspectives on German Cinema (Coeditor with Terri Ginsberg). New York: GK Hall. ISBN 0816116113.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  8. Wayne State (1 May 2008). "Board of Governors Recognize Outstanding Faculty Efforts". Retrieved 17 September 2015.
  9. Allen, Valerie (2010). "Se7en: Medieval Justice, Modern Justice". Journal of Popular Culture. 43 (6).
  10. Judd, J. Wesley (20 February 2015). "Can Jupiter Ascending Change the Way we Feel About the Matrix?". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
  11. Gates, Phillippa (1 May 2015). "Detective Films". Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780199791286-0024. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
  12. Piper, Helen (2015). The TV Detective: Voices of Dissent in Contemporary Television. London and New York: Tauris, NY. p. 149. ISBN 9781780762944.
  13. Eliot, Paul (2014). Studying the British Crime Film. Auteur, UK. pp. 2, 6, 8, 61.
  14. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (2015). Classical Cel Animation, World War Two and Bambi, 1939–1945. New York and London: in American Film History: Selected Reading: Origins to 1960, eds. Cynthia Lucia, Art Simon and Roy Grundmann. Blackwell. pp. 311–325. ISBN 978-1118475133.
  15. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (February 2014). "Quick-- Like a Bunny !' The Ink and Paint Machine, Female Labor and Color Production". Animation Studies. 9. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  16. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (June 2014). "Animating Ephemeral Surfaces: Transparency, Translucency and Disney's World of Color". Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media. 24. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  17. "Victoria University". Inaugural Public Lecture: "The Ephemeral Immersive Screen: Disney’s World of Color". 12 June 2014. Archived from the original on 1 October 2015. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
  18. Ryan, Katherine (9 June 2014). "Color and Visual Culture: Interview with Kirsten Thompson". Retrieved 17 September 2015.
  19. Thompson, Kirsten Moana (Spring 2015). "Falling In (to) Color: Chromophilia and Tom Ford's A Single Man". The Moving Image. 15 (1): 62. doi:10.5749/movingimage.15.1.0062. JSTOR 10.5749/movingimage.15.1.0062.
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