forthcoming

Scholarly work:

Making History Move: Constructing a Historiophoty for the Historical Film explores and consolidates decades of scholarship investigating history in visual culture in the fields of film, media, cultural studies, and history. The book develops insights across these approaches, including philosophical considerations of film and history, to clarify the forms and functions of history in moving images. The book definitively isolates the genres and modes with the most profound impact on public and mass understanding of history, charting a detailed methodology to analyze history in moving images in the digital age. It proposes five principles of analysis to organize past and future scholarship in this vital, interdisciplinary field of study.

Kim Nelson, Rutgers University Press, 2024

 

Upcoming Performances

Pitas and Passports

This project experiments with and explores the affordances and opportunities of “edible cinema.” In Part I spectator-participants will eat along with the film.

Ice Farmers

Ice Farmers traces the history of the “Back to the Land” scheme of the 1930s, an initiative that saw the relocation of out of work men and their families from southern Ontario to the fertile but frigid Clay Belt of north. This had been the third attempt by the government to establish agriculture in the region since 1916 and it was the third scheme to fail due to the unsuitability of the land for farming with its limited 80 days annually without frost. During the Depression, out of work, and out-of-options men and their families headed north for adventure only to be exposed to starvation, isolation, poverty, bitter cold, and finally, defeat. The film explores the story of one family’s struggles to survive and the land itself as tormentor, victim and witness. Ice Farmers will be a transmedia project, viewable as a traditional documentary and live documentary experience performed with audience participation. Initially planned as a collaboration with Windsor Symphony Orchestra (WSO) in March 2021 the show has been postponed due to COVID.