Stephanie DeBoer

Biography

My research, creative activities, and teaching address the co-constitution of place, space, and location as they are produced within transnational, regional, and urban screen media cultures. My work is interdisciplinary, multi-modal, and often collaborative. It draws from critical screen, cinema, and media studies; critical geography studies; urban and infrastructure studies; global, transnational, and regional studies; as well as digital humanities and creative practice.

In addition to teaching and working in my home unit of Cinema and Media Arts/Studies, The Media School, I also teach in the Department of International Studies, School of Global and International Studies.  I am also affiliated with the Department of Geography, East Asian Languages and Cultures, as well as the Cultural Studies Program.

Courses Commonly Taught

Undergraduate

• F204: Screen Cultures
• C219: Media in the Global Context
• F392: From Video Screens to Video Art
• F398: Chinese Cinemas/Transnational Chinese Cinemas
• F413/I305: Media Screens and Global Frames
• F413/I305: Global Media Infrastructures: Undersea Cables to Local Itineraries
• MSCH-P335: Production as Criticism (People of IU: Curating Public Screens)
• X478: Uncovering the Media City: Public Screen Cultures and Urban China (Field Experience in Media)
• IFS (Intensive Freshmen Seminar): Global Media at Home and in the World

Graduate

• MSCH-C503: Media Theories
• MSCH-F793: Screen Technologies and Cultures
• MSCH-F596: Trans/national Film and Media: Core Concepts
• MSCH-F652: Space, Place, and Media in a Global Context
• MSCH-F792: Space, Place, and Media: Approaches in Media and Geography
• MSCH-M500: Epistemologies of Media
• MSCH-M600: Media Arts & Sciences Colloquium

Publication Highlights

Infrastructures on the Edge: On the Material, Poetic, and Political Valences of Screens in Urban Space [book manuscript under development]

Coproducing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Regional Film and Media.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

“Urban Screens, Media Facades, and the Infrastructural Politics and Poetics of Digital Light,” Oxford Companion to Chinese Digital Media, Eds. Carlos Rojas, Jinying Li, Yomi Braester. Oxford UP. [Forthcoming 2023]

“On Campus Screen Ecologies: Entry Points for Inhabiting Campus Spaces and Archives,” The Documentary Moment, Eds. Josh Malitsky and Patrik Sjoberg. Bloomington: Indiana UP.  [Forthcoming 2022]

“Technologies of Co-production, Japan-in-Asia, and the Cold War Production of Regional Place,” The Japanese Cinema Book. Eds. Alastair Phillips, Hideaki Fujiki. London: BFI, 2020. 505-517.

“On Adjacency: Infrastructural Tactics for Urban Screens in Transit (Shanghai version),” Leonardo (special issue on urban interfaces edited by Nanna Verhoeff, Sigrid Merx, and Michiel de Lange) 22.4 (March 15, 2019). https://www.leoalmanac.org/urban-interfaces/

“New Media / New Asia: From Dominant to Residual Geographies of Emergent Video, Screen, and Media Arts.” The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema. Eds. Gina Marchetti, Tan See Kam. Aaron Magnan-Park. London: Palgrave, 2018. 129-148.

“On the Way: A Screens Collective Project on the Infrastructural Affects of Waiting in Urban Transit,” Association for Computing (ACM), [Project description based in project presentation to Media Architecture Biennale 2018, with Petra Johnson], 2018.

“Uncovering the Media City: Public Screens and Urban China,” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Cultures 2:3 (June 20) 2018. http://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2018/06/uncovering-the-media-city-public-screens-and-urban-china/

“Working Through China: Scaled Convergence and the Contingencies of East Asian Film Co-production.” Screen, 56.2 (Summer) 2015.

“Locating the Global in the Asias of Cinema and Media,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1:1 2014.

“Film and Media Locations: Toward a Dynamic and Scaled Sense of Global Place,” Framing the Global: Entrypoints for Research. Ed. Hilary Kahn. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2014.

“Co-Producing Cross-Border Action: Technologies of Contact, Masculinity and the Asia-Pacific Border.” Culture, Theory & Critique, 5.1 (April) 2011.

“Framing Tokyo Media Capital and Asian Co-production,” East Asian Cinemas: Regional Flows and Global Transformations. Ed. Vivian Lee. London: Palgrave P, 2011.

“Japanese Film, Co-productions and Regional Desires in the 1960s.” Japanese Film Lives: Audiences, Producers  (Vol. 3). Eds. Kurosawa Akira, Yomota Inuhiko, Yoshimi Shunya, Li Fengyu. Tokyo: Iwanami P, 2010. [published in Japanese]

“Scaling the TV Station: Fuji Television, Digital Development and Fictions of Global Tokyo.” Television, Japan, Globalization. Ed. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto et. al. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2010.

“Tokyo, Television, and the Urban Imaginary.” Tokyo Studies. Ed Yoshimi Shunya, Wakabayashi Mikio. Tokyo: Kinokuniya P, 2005.  [published in Japanese]

“Sayon no Kane/Sayon’s Bell.” Ed. Justin Boyer. 24 Frames: The Cinema of Japan and Korea. London: Wallflower P, 2004.

Edited Publications

In process:  Co-editor with Kristy H.A. Kang, NTU Singapore: “Emergent Visions: Situated Practices and Adjaencies of Urban Screens, Media Facades and Media Architecture.” Special issue of Cultural Studies, including both scholarly text and digital/online curated contributions.

Curator and co-editor of collection of 12 essays in Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture. On urban screens in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Essays resulted from the 2018 Media School travel course, X478: Uncovering the Media City: Public Screen Cultures and Urban China, with field visits to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Each received an extensive review process with the journal supported by me. June, 2018. http://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2018/06/uncovering-the-media-city-public-screens-and-urban-china/

Symposia Organized

“Emergent Visions: Adjacency and Urban Screens.” Symposium co-organized by Kristy H.A. Kang (Nanyang Technological University), Stephanie DeBoer (Indiana University), and Anne Balsamo (UT Dallas). Hosted by the School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, March 30-April 1, 2018. http://www.emergentvisions.net

Creative and Collaborative Work

“The People of IU: Moving Image Portraits and the Public Screen.”

• An ongoing creative and curatorial project conceived, directed, and produced with Susanne Schwibs, IU professor and documentary filmmaker. With the students of P335: Production as Criticism, we create 45-second moving picture portraits of “The People of IU,” and document, curate, display, and project these portraits on a variety of public screens and surfaces on campus. Adapting Warhol’s “screen test” concept to the figures that constitute the IU community, we further ask what it means to bring such portraits to the public space of a campus — how the production of the portraits themselves might shift in our awareness of their public future, and how they might further impact upon the inhabitants of this campus as they live, work, play, and pass through its screen, built, and archival environments.
  • Inaugurated and exhibited Fall 2019: https://mediaschool.indiana.edu/news-events/news/item.html?n=warhol-inspired-portrait-project-documents-displays-people-of-iu,
  • Further exhibited Spring 2021 at the Gayle Karch Cook Center for Public Arts and Humanities, also a part of Bloomington’s May 2021 Gallery Walk: https://artsandhumanities.indiana.edu/cook-center/exhibitions/people-of-iu.html

“Capture(d): An Exercise in Undoing Affective Engineering.” Received “honorable mention” for the 2019-2020 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen) Main Venue Section 1 – “Eyes of the City,” Shenzhen, PRC.

• Utilizing a variety of screening strategies and playful prompts, the project sits at the razor thin line between captured commuting time within the surveillance and advertising screens of transit, and commuters’ own small/mobile screen capture of everyday lived moments of waiting. Formed by members of the Screens Collective – Shaw Xu Zhifeng, Petra Johnson, and Stephanie DeBoer. The Collective, established in Shanghai in December 2015, is a research-based arts collective that addresses fundamental questions concerning the potential of urban screens as sites of public contact.

“On Waiting with Screens in Transit.” Exhibition of video, text, and fabric screen, Tongji University College of Design and Innovation, Shanghai. May 6-17, 2019.

• The exhibition makes visible and known the movements, sensations, and temporalities that craft our contemporary moments of waiting. As screens of all sizes are present in our spaces of transit, how do we wait with (and without) screens? Formed by members of the Screens Collective – Shaw Xu Zhifeng, Petra Johnson, and Stephanie DeBoer. The Collective, established in Shanghai in December 2015, is a research-based arts collective that addresses fundamental questions concerning the potential of urban screens as sites of public contact. Accompanied by a public roundtable (“How Do We Wait with Screens in Transit,” 5/6/2019). Supported by my month-long residency at the Making Lab, directed by Dr. Hongtao ZHOU, Tongji University College of Design and Innovation.  https://mediaschool.indiana.edu/news-events/news/item.html?n=screens-collective-exhibit-emulates-waiting-with-screens

The “Screen Ecology Project.”

• An ongoing campus investigation of public screens and their potentials for facilitating public dialogue, encounter, and collaboration. Conceived of with support from the IU Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities in my capacity as a 2017-2018 IDAH Faculty Fellow. A pilot of the project took place as part of my spring 2019 course, F204 Screen Cultures – with the support of the Wells Library, the Moving Image Archive, and IDAH. Initial description can be found here: https://mediaschool.indiana.edu/news-events/news/item.html?n=ius-screen-ecology-permeates-classrooms-common-spaces-and-even-assembly-hall

Producer, Organizer, Artistic Consultant, China Remixed: Public Video Art Exhibition (Curator: Isaac Leung of Videotage, Hong Kong). Exhibition held on multiple public screens at IU: Feb. 1-March 10, 2017.   https://chinaremixedvideoart.indiana.edu/index.html

Translations

Six published interviews with director Zhang Yimou translated from Chinese into English in: Zhang Yimou: Interviews.  Ed. Frances Gateward, Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2001. 3-14, 23-29, 50-56, 67-70, 74-98, 119-126, 133-146, 147-150.

Interviews Published On My Work

Francesca Tarocco, “New Media Hell: Interview with Stephanie DeBoer, Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber, Lu Yang,” Flash Art Issue 307, March-April, 2016.  [published by Flash Art International, Milan Italy]. Also online: https://flash—art.com/article/new-media-hell/

Invited Talks and Seminars

“Scaling Infrastructure: On the Politics, Poetics, and Performance of Screens in Urban Space,” Asia Research Institute/Department of Communications and New Media, National University Singapore (4/5/2022)

“Sight and Site: Media Art, Urban Screens, and the Politics, Poetics, and Performance of  Scale in the Screened City,” University of Pittsburgh (2/10/2020).

“On Adjacency: Infrastructural Tactics for Urban Screens (Shanghai Version),” St. Olaf College (faculty research talk) (9/28/2017)

“Uncovering the Media City: Public Screen Cultures and Urban China,” St. Olaf College (to Asian studies and film studies undergraduate students) (9/28/2017)

“Locating Urban Screens: On Relational Screen/Art/Urban Infrastructures (Shanghai version),” Center for Chinese Studies, UCLA (12/5/2016)

“Shadow and Translation,” Public Joint Talk on the Event of the Art Exhibition “Shadow and Translation,” with Petra Johnson, M21: Shanghai 21^st Century Art Museum, Shanghai, PRC (7/2016)

“New Media / New Asia: Dominant and Residual Geographies of Emerging Media Arts.” Invited speaker. Department of Comparative Literature, Hong Kong University (11/17/2015)

“Media – Art – Architectural Complexes: On Site and Scale for Global Screens.”  Invited keynote speaker. New Terrain: 8^th Annual Landscape, Space, and Place Graduate Student Conference, Indiana University (2/27/2014)

“Working Through China: Place, Scale, and Japan’s New Asian Film Co-production.” Invited speaker. East Asian Studies, Department of Communication, Wittenberg University (11/2012)

“Working Through China: Place, Scale, and Japan’s New Asian Film Co-production.” Invited speaker. Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University (10/2012)