Samuel Smucker

Biography

Samuel Smucker’s dissertation, Expatriate Cinema: Melvin Van Peebles’s Paris Years, is a case study of the relationship between aesthetics and politics in transnational cinema. He examines Van Peebles’s expatriatism to illuminate the diasporic and Third-World influences and origins of contemporary African American cinema. Van Peebles’s transnational cinema in the context of Cedric Robinson’s Black Radical Tradition and “fugitive” aesthetics. He received a Chateaubriand Fellowship, which supported a semester-long residency in Paris to do archival research. His research interests include African-American and U.S. film history, media theory, and the political economy of media representation. At IU, he has taught Scriptwriting, Screening Race and Ethnicity, and From Harlem to Paris: Transnational Cinema and Culture.

M.A. THESES

“The Baadasssss and The Avant-Garde: The Radical Politics and Aesthetics of Melvin Van Peebles.” School of Communications. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. May 2019.

“The Class Consciousness of Union Organizers.” Department of Sociology. The University of Illinois at Chicago. May 1994.

PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Article

“Pivotal Encounters: Melvin Van Peebles, Amos Vogel, and the Beginnings of a Black Radical Cinema.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Forthcoming.

“A Black Radical Cinema before Sweetback: ‘Everyday Realism’ in Melvin Van Peebles’s Early Films.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Forthcoming.

“A Wide Shot: Expanding the Frame on Melvin Van Peebles,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: The Correspondence of Melvin Van Peebles with Kermit Eby and June Greenlief,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“‘It Was All Melvin!’ Interview with John B. Bennett, Producer of Watermelon Man,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“‘He Felt Like He Could Be His True Self Here,’ Interview with Christian Thivat, Producer of La Permission / Story of a Three Day Pass,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“Between Burlesque and Black Horror: Interview with Jean-Pierre Saire, Producer of Le Conte de Ventre Plien / Bellyful (2000),” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“Melvin Van Peebles Bibliography 1957-1969,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

“Moral Choices and Social Mobility in Lady Bird and The Graduation,” Film Criticism Journal, Volume 42, Issue 3, 2018.

Book Reviews

“Representations of Labor in Cinema: Skvirsky’s The Process Genre reveals that which was always there,” JumpCut 61. Summer 2022.

“News War Shapes Political Rhetoric Evolution: Sid Bedingfield’s Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965,” Gateway Journalism Review. Winter 2018.

Editing

Close-up Editor: “A Wide Shot: Expanding the Frame on Melvin Van Peebles,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, forthcoming Fall 2024.

Translations

Samuel Smucker, Nathan Rabord, and Julie Le Hegarat, translators, “The Invincible Chester Himes” Interview with Melvin Van Peebles, France Observateur, February 20, 1964. 13-14. Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

Samuel Smucker, Nathan Rabord, and Julie Le Hegarat, translators, Melvin Van Peebles, “The Right to Be Ordinary” (1967), Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS

Invited

“Melvin Van Peebles’s Three Pick-Up Men for Herrick: Political Aesthetics and Transatlantic Film Distribution.” SEARCH Research Laboratory. University of Strasbourg. May 2023.

“Melvin Van Peebles and his French Years.” Le laboratoire 3L.AM – Langues, Littératures, Linguistique des Universités d’Angers et du Mans. February 2023.

Presentations

“Melvin Van Peebles at the Cinémathèque Algerienne: Transnational Cinema and International Solidarity.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Boston, MA, March 2024. Panelist.

“Funding and Organizing Your Research Abroad.” Media School Graduate Colloquium. Indiana University. September 2023. Department Talk.

“Legacy, the Archive, and an Account of Whiteness in Les Cinq Cent Balles.” Melvin Van Peebles Symposium. Ohio Wesleyan University. April 2023. Panelist.

“Melvin Van Peebles and the Two Avant-Grades: The Political Aesthetics of Distribution and Exhibition of Three Pick-Up Men for Herrick.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Conference Online. April 2022. Panel Organizer.

“Why No Genres? Industry Cycles in Films with Black Lead Actors in the 1970s.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Conference Online. March 2021. Panelist.

“From Steelworkers to Ironman: The Disappearing Working Class Hero in Wide Release Films.” Media School Colloquium. October 2020. Department Talk.

“Melvin Van Peebles’s Lumpenproletarian Folk Hero.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. (Accepted. Conference Cancelled). April 2020. Panelist.

“Le Baadasssss: Melvin Van Peebles and the French New Wave.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 2019. Panelist.

“The Meanings of Production: The Ideological Effects of Private Ownership.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 2019. Seminar Participant.

“The Guy Who Knows What He’s Talking About: Melvin Van Peebles in France.” Film and History Conference. Madison, WI. November 2018. Panelist.

“Union Organizing among Film and Television Production Workers in Los Angeles.” Union for Democratic Communications Conference. Chicago, IL. May 2018. Panelist.

“Expanded Time: Time-Setting Variation in Wide Release Films in the U.S.” Popular Culture Conference, Indianapolis, IN. March 2018. Chair.

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Fellow, Institute for Critical Inquiry, 2024 Seminar: Reading Marx’s Grundrisse with David Harvey, New School for Social Research, June 2024.

Summer Cushman Memorial Fellowship, The Media School, Indiana University. Spring 2024.

The Hawkins Cinema and Media Studies Fellowship, The Media School, Indiana University. Fall 2023.

Chateaubriand Fellowship. French Embassy in the United States. Service de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle. Spring 2023.

Graduate and Professional School Government Research Award, Indiana University. Fall 2023.

Center for Research for Race and Ethnicity in Society Graduate Student Research Award. Indiana University. Spring 2022.

Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant. Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, Indiana University. Summer 2021.

Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant. Black Camera: An International Film Journal. Summer 2021.