Catherine Benamou, Associate Professor of Screen Arts & Cultures, American Culture, and Romance Languages and Literatures; she is also on the faculty of the Latino/a Studies Program, 1998-

Teaching/research interests include: history and theory of Documentary cinema; international film genres; cinema and Diaspora; Spanish-language television, transmission and reception; indigenous media in the hemisphere; the history of inter-American representation; Brazilian cinema and television, Orson Welles.

Publications

Books:

It's All True: Orson Welles at Work in Latin America. (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming, 2004)

Book Chapters:

"Realism as artifice and the Lure of the Real in Orson Welles's F for Fake (1973) and Other T(r)eas(u)ers." Chapter in Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, eds., F Is for Phony (University of Minnesota Press). Submitted under contract.

with Lucia Saks, "Circumatlantic Media Migrations." Chapter in Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia, eds. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin, pp. 150-165. (London: British Film Institute, 2003).

"Trans-Gender Readings of Transnational Televovelas: Los Angeles as a Site of Reception." Chapter in Telenovelas: The Local and the Global, ed. Ana M. Lopez. Submitted under review at Temple University Press: also submitted to Nepantla journal, Fall, 2003.

"Cuban Cinema: On the Threshold of Gender." Revised. Chapter in Redirecting the Gaze: Third World Women Filmmakers, ed. Diana Robin and Ira Jaffe, ppg. 68-97. (New York: SUNY Press, 1999).

Articles in Refereed Journals:

"Retrieving Orson Welles's Suspended Inter-American Film, It's All True, 1941-1993." Nuevo Texto Critico 21/22 (January-December, 1998): pp. 249-276. Special Issue: "Revision del cine de los cincuenta/Revisioning Film in the Fifties."

"Notes Toward a Memography of Latin American Women's Cinema." Symposium 48 (Winter 1995): ppg. 257-269. Special Issue: "Latin American Women's Voices: 500 Years After."

"Cuban Cinema: On the Threshold of Gender." Frontiers 15 (1994): pp. 51-75.

"The Body as Signifier: The Constuction of National, Cultural and Sexual Identity in Recent Brazilian and Philippine Cinema." Motion Picture (1990).

"It's All True as Document/Event: Notes Towards an Historiographical and Textual Analysis." Persistence of Vision 7 (1989): pp. 121-152. Special Issue on Orson Welles.

Edited Texts, with an Introduction:

"Indigenous Mediamaking in Comparative Perspective: Testimonies from Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico." Chapter in Cinema and Social Change. ed. Julianne Burton. Revised edition. Proposal under review at University of Texas Press.

On Location with Orson Welles: A Memoir byGeorge Fanto. Book in progress.

Interviews with Filmmakers and Media Professionasl:

"'Those Earrings, That Accent, That Hair': A Dialogue with Maria Hinojosa on Latino/as and the Media." In Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, ed. Ella Shoat, pp. 325-356. (New York: The New Museum; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

Additionally, Dr. Benamou has published numerous book and exhibition reviews in such publications as Michigan Quaterly Review, Wide Angle, Discourse, Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, Afterimage, Cineaste, and The Independent Film and Video Monthly. She has also written numerous encyclopedia entries and catalogue essays for pubishers including Routledge, Univeristy of Texas Press and Greenwood Press.


Recently, Dr. Benamou also made presentations to "The Unknown Orson Welles" film conference hosted by the Filmmuseum in Munich, Germany; "Shakespeare on Screen: the Centenary Conference," hosted by the University of Malaga at Benalmadena, Spain; and the Plenary on the State of the Profession, Society for Cinema Studies conference in Chicago, Illinois. She has presented numerous lectures and papers at a variety of institutions and conferences including Vassar College (May 2003), Universidade Federal Fuminense, Niteroi, Brazil (January 2003), Notre Dame (February 2001), Bowling Green University, Univerisity of California, Santa Cruz, and Tulane University.

She completed a book manuscript, IT'S ALL TRUE: ORSON WELLES AT WORK IN LATIN AMERICA (University of California Press), and is developing a comprehensive research project on the transmission and reception of Spanish- and Portuguese-language television in the diverse Latino/a Communities of Los Angeles, California. She launched the IT'S ALL TRUE PRESERVATION PROJECT at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. She continues to chair the Latino/a Caucus of the Society for Cinema Studies, and is Co-Chair of the Caucus Coordinating Committee.

Ms. Benamou teaches the following courses at the University of Michigan:
AC 351: RACE AND AMERICAN CINEMA
AC 380/SP380/FV 380: STUDIES IN TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA
AC420/SP 420: LATINAMERICAN AND LATINO/A FILM STUDIES
FV 455: ORSON WELLES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
AC490/FV451: AMERICAN FILM GENRES
LS505/ FV 603:FILM AND CULTURE.

Additionally, she taught FV 350: History of American Cinema in Fall, '03 and will teach FV 414: Film Theory in Spring, '04.

Academic Advisement:

At the University of Michigan:

Ph.D. Advisees: 3 ; Ph.D. Committees as First Reader or Cognate Member: Active: 5; Defended: 5 ; Undergraduate Honors Projects: Completed: 2 ; Active: 1.