William Rothman

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William Rothman (photo by Kitty Morgan) William Rothman.jpg
William Rothman (photo by Kitty Morgan)

William Rothman (born June 25, 1944) is an American film theorist and critic. Since receiving his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1974, he has authored numerous books, including Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze (1982), The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History and Aesthetic (1988), and Tuitions and Intuitions: Essays at the Intersection of Film Criticism and Philosophy (2019). [1] He was "part of a modern wave of thinkers to apply questions of philosophy to the medium of movies" [2] during the 1980s, and his work contributed to the emergence of the sub-discipline that has come to be known as "film-philosophy." [3] Rothman has also written on aspects of film theory and on the writings of Stanley Cavell, an American philosopher who made film a major focus of his work. [2] [4] [5] He is currently Professor of Cinematic Arts in the School of Communication at the University of Miami. [6]

Contents

Life

William Rothman received his Ph.D. from Harvard's Philosophy Department, where Stanley Cavell was his dissertation advisor. [7] After submitting his dissertation [8] in 1973, he accepted a position as assistant professor in Cinema Studies at New York University. In 1976, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant brought him back to Harvard, "to develop a set of eight courses to the present curriculum in film and to develop new teaching and research tools...to help secure the humanistic incorporation of film into universities." [9]

In 1986, Rothman became Director of the International Honors Program on Film, Television and Social Change in Europe and Asia. In 1989, he and his wife, filmmaker Kitty Morgan, wrote and co-produced (with the National Film Development Corporation of India) Unni, a 35mm feature film shot in South India and directed by the Indian filmmaker G. Aravindan. [10] [2] [11] [12] In 1990, Rothman relocated to Florida to be a professor in the Motion Picture Program (now the Department of Cinematic Arts) at the University of Miami, [13] where he served as Director of the Graduate Program in Film Studies for several years. [14] He was the founding editor of the "Harvard Film Studies" series at Harvard University Press, [15] and also served as series editor for the "Cambridge Studies in Film" series at Cambridge University Press. [16]

Writings

Rothman has published critical essays on films ranging from the works of Alfred Hitchcock and other "classical" directors (e.g., George Cukor, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder) to more contemporary filmmakers (e.g., Chantal Akerman, the Dardenne brothers, Abbas Kiarostami, Terrence Malick). [17]

In Rothman's first book, Hitchcock:The Murderous Gaze (1982), his stated goals were to achieve a philosophical perspective on Hitchcock's authorship and to investigate, philosophically, the conditions of authorship in film. [18] In pursuit of these goals, he performed extended readings, incorporating over 600 frame enlargements of five Hitchcock films. [19] [20] [21]

His 1997 book Documentary Film Classics was part of a revival of scholarly interest in the subject, [22] focusing on historically significant documentaries (from Nanook of the North and Land without Bread to Night and Fog, "direct cinema" films of Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker, ethnographic films of Jean Rouch and Robert Gardner, and personal documentaries by Alfred Guzzetti, Ross McElwee and Edward Pincus).

Rothman has also written on and edited collections of the writings of Cavell, [23] [24] which, according to scholar David LaRocca, have "helped the inheritance of Cavell's relationship to film and thinking about film." [25] Rothman's later work focused on the implications of the affinities between Cavell's way of thinking and that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a moral and philosophical outlook Cavell named "Emersonian perfectionism." [26] [27]

Books

Selected Keynote Addresses, Special Lectures, and Other Professional Activities

Further reading

References

  1. "William Rothman". UM School of Communication. Retrieved 2021-06-07.
  2. 1 2 3 Crouse, Jeffrey (23 January 2012). "Introduction to the William Rothman Interview ('Why not realize your world?')" . Film International. 9 (6): 59–61. doi:10.1386/fiin.9.6.59_1 via Ingenta Connect.
  3. Cholodenko, Alan (2014-12-01). "Acknowledgment – No Knowledge Without It: Introduction to William Rothman and his Work". Film-Philosophy. 18 (1): 1–8. doi: 10.3366/film .
  4. Miller, Michael W. (November 12, 1981). "Filmic Philosophy and New Gamesman | Magazine | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2021-08-11.
  5. Carlin, Romano (December 1998). "Sticking to His Guns on Films and Philosophy". Philadelphia Inquirer. p. C. 5.
  6. "William Rothman". UM School of Communication. Retrieved 2021-08-11.
  7. Rothman, William David (1974). Three Essays in Aesthetics: 1. A Theory of Art as a Threefold Relation Among Artist, Work of Art and Audience, 2. Toward a Theory of Narrative Film, and 3. An Analytical Description of the Fil (Thesis).
  8. Resources in Education. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, National Institute of Education. 1975.
  9. National Endowment for the Humanities grant proposal, "Toward a Humanistic Study of Film." Program director: Stanley Cavell.
  10. Carr, Jay (1989). "A Wistful, Sensitive Unni". Boston Globe. p. 82.
  11. Morgan, William Rothman/Katherine (2019-12-27), Tribute to G. Aravindan , retrieved 2021-07-28
  12. Assisi, Francis (March 1990). "Aravindan Directs New Indo-American Collaboration". India – West. p. 53.
  13. Osorio, Larry Boytano, Judy Cantor, Nina Korman, Jennifer. "Calendar for the week". Miami New Times. Retrieved 2021-08-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. "William Rothman". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2021-08-11.
  15. Guzzetti, Alfred (1981). Two or three things I know about her : analysis of a film by Godard. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 1–2.
  16. "Cambridge Studies in Film". Cambridge Core. Retrieved 2021-08-11.
  17. Sullivan, David (1998). "'I'ing Cinema: Rothman's Readings of Cinematographic Visions and Visionaries". Film-Philosophy. 2 (1). doi: 10.3366/film.1998.0003 .
  18. Vaughan, Hunter; Conley, Tom (2018). The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory. Anthem Press. ISBN   978-1-78308-825-6.
  19. Rothman, William (1982). Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  20. Gough-Yates, Kevin (1983). "Books: Hitchcock". Art Monthly. 65: 27.
  21. Andersen, Soren (October 2005). "Get inside the head of Hitchcock; Tacoma's Grand Cinema kicks off an Alfred Hitchcock film series this week with a lecture by a noted authority on the director's films". The News Tribune. p. E01.
  22. MacLennan, Gary (1997). "Rothman and the Challenge of Critical Realism". Film-Philosophy. 1. doi: 10.3366/film.1997.0010 .
  23. Butler, Rex (2020). Stanley Cavell and the Arts: Philosophy and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-1-350-00853-3.
  24. Rothman, William; Keane, Marian (2000). Reading Cavell's The World Viewed: A Philosophical Perspective on Film. Wayne State University Press. ISBN   978-0-8143-2896-5.
  25. LaRocca, David (2021). Movies with Stanley Cavell in Mind. London: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 22.
  26. Rothman, William (2014). Must We Kill the Thing We Love? Emersonian Perfectionism and the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Columbia University Press.
  27. Cavell, Stanley (1990). Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.