Tim Gruenewald researches and teaches U.S. cultural and visual studies with a focus on popular culture including film, television, graphic narrative, and public memory sites. His research investigates how memories of difficult and contested pasts intersect with the national imagination. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington in Seattle. He has been serving as the Director of the American Studies Programme since 2014. Currently, Dr. Gruenewald is completing a three-year Hong Kong RGC funded research project on recent transformations of national memory on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Dr. Gruenewald is also a filmmaker. His documentary feature Sacred Ground was selected for the competition at several international festivals in the United States and won the Independent Spirit Award at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema in 2015. The film establishes the connection between two iconic memory sites in the United States: Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
During the global BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finall... more During the global BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finally face its painful past. Tim Gruenewald's new book is an in-depth investigation of how that past is currently remembered at the national museums in Washington, DC. Curating America's Painful Past reveals how the tragic past is either minimized or framed in a way that does not threaten dominant national ideologies. Gruenewald analyzes the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
The NMAH, the nation's most popular history museum, serves as the benchmark for the imagination of US history and identity. The USHMM opened in 1993 as the United States' official Holocaust memorial and stands adjacent to the National Mall. Gruenewald makes a persuasive case that the USHMM established a successful blueprint for narrating horrific and traumatic histories. Curating America's Painful Past contrasts these two museums to ask why America's painful memories were largely absent from the memorial landscape of the National Mall and argues that social injustices in the present cannot be addressed until the nation's painful past is fully acknowledged and remembered.
It was only with the opening of the NMAAHC in 2016 that a detailed account of atrocities committed against African Americans appeared on the National Mall. Gruenewald focuses on the museum's narrative structure in the context of national discourse to provide a critical reading of the museum. When the NMAI opened in 2004, it presented for the first time a detailed history from a Native American perspective that sought to undo conventional museum narratives. However, criticism led to more traditional exhibitions and national focus. Nevertheless, the museum still marginalizes memories of the vast numbers of Indigenous victims to European colonization and to US expansion. In a final chapter, Gruenewald offers a thought experiment, imagining a memory site like the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama) situated on the National Mall so the reader can assess how profound an effect projects of national memory can have on facing the past as a matter of present justice.
Please find the preface and chapter 1 attached.
Please see here for ordering the book:
https://tinyurl.com/bdcc45w2
http://bit.do/tgruene
The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of Afri... more http://bit.do/tgruene The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of African American art and history in the world today. The collection spans five-hundred years of African American intellectual and artistic impacts, and shifts the memory of African American history from victimhood to an emphasis of social and cultural achievement. Through selected pieces in The Kinsey Collection, Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection explains how African Americans have influenced the course of history and art through aesthetic, intellectual, and political innovation. Together, the contributors exemplify the role of memory and bring to light prominent figures of African American history, not yet fully appreciated for their contributions. These essays encourage a deeper understanding of creative ways of resisting and contributing, which African Americans have shown consistently throughout U.S. history. To date, the collection has exhibited in twenty-four major art and history museums around the country including the Norton Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, The DuSable Museum and the Underground Railroad Museum.
http://bit.do/tgruene2
This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United... more http://bit.do/tgruene2 This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United States' endless wars. Investigating multiple genres of popular culture alongside contemporary U.S. foreign policy and political economy, Imperial Benevolence shows that American popular culture continuously suppresses awareness of U.S. imperialism while assuming American exceptionalism and innocence. This is despite the fact that it is rarely a product of the state. Expertly coordinated essays by prominent historians and media scholars address the ways that movies and television series such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Avengers, and even The Walking Dead, as well as video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, have largely presented the United States as a global force for good. Popular culture, with few exceptions, has depicted the U.S. as a reluctant hegemon fiercely defending human rights and protecting or expanding democracy from the barbarians determined to destroy it.
http://bit.do/tgruene3
This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chin... more http://bit.do/tgruene3 This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chinese filmmakers working in the United States.
Lissa Crofton-Sleigh and Brian Beams (eds.) Past and Future Presence: Approaches for Implementing XR Technology in Humanities and Art Education (Amherst College Press), 2024
This chapter explores the use of VR technology for virtual field trips in area studies. The discu... more This chapter explores the use of VR technology for virtual field trips in area studies. The discussion is based on two virtual field trip courses to the United States that were conducted at the University of Hong Kong in 2021 and 2022. After a review of the literature on virtual field trips, the chapter introduces three core principles of the course design. First, experiential learning: VR enables embodied experiences with strong physical, emotional, and social impact that uniquely complement conventional media in the classroom. Second, interactive learning: interactivity is a strength of VR and can be leveraged to enhance teaching and learning. Third, value-added use of technology: use of VR should improve teaching and learning in a way that cannot be achieved through other (i.e. simpler) means. The main part of the chapter concerns the course structure, limitations of current VR technology and content, the selection of VR platforms for teaching. The chapter also discusses two examples of how VR was implemented: first, in a course section on Wounded Knee, Native American history and memory, and, second, in a section on systemic inequity in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Virtual Reality (VR) film has been described as an empathy machine. Filmmakers and producers have claimed that VR film’s immersive qualities can amplify empathy for victims of humanitarian crises and move the viewer to support humanitarian aid organizations. This paper questions these transformative assumptions about VR film. We call attention to how humanitarian VR films are techniques that promote emotional styles like empathy through the script of suffering and hope. Through analysis of humanitarian VR films, the use of character, narrative, and formal VR film devices, we show how empathy is created. Thereby, we focus specifically on the simulation of particular locales, intimate encounters with the suffering Other, and gratification of viewer needs. The paper concludes that humanitarian VR films simulate an engagement with global problems when, in fact, they are catering to the emotional needs of people engaging with those problems. The global citizen as a feeling self becomes caught in interpersonal affective textures, which obscure geopolitical causes of humanitarian crises. Hence, the paper questions empathy as a universal way to better the world and diverges from the celebration of humanitarian VR film as a universal empathy machine.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum (9/11 MM) employs affective rhetoric to enshrine th... more The National September 11 Memorial and Museum (9/11 MM) employs affective rhetoric to enshrine the trauma of September 11 in support of U.S. nationalism. Applying Brian Massumi's understanding of affect as intensity, I examine how the site's rhetoric amplifies affect. The memorial pools and many signifiers of destruction magnify affective intensity through scale and repetition. The 9/11 MM continues its affective onslaught through an excessive number of shocking visuals and narrative details in its historical exhibition. The site's affective intensity culminates in a non-linear and non-narrative memorial space of seemingly infinite individualized mourning. The article discusses the site's political and social impact by considering Nigel Thrift's idea of affect in the built environment as imbedded thought and Georg Böhme's theory of atmosphere, understood as the reciprocal relationship between affective urban space and its impact on people.
This essay examines the National Museum of African American History and Culture, focusing on the ... more This essay examines the National Museum of African American History and Culture, focusing on the historical galleries and especially the slavery exhibition, and argues that the museum embraces a narrative of liberation and national progress that reaffirms dominant ideologies of the United States. The inclusion of African American history at the nation's memorial core, and especially the painful history of slavery and Jim Crow, would present an opportunity to critique the ideologies of freedom and equality that have been proclaimed as core national values ever since the Declaration of Independence. Analyzing the museum's narrative structure and spatial configurations, I argue that the museum singles out Thomas Jefferson while failing to mention that many Founding Fathers owned slaves, most notably George Washington. Ultimately, Jefferson, too, is redeemed as the author of the Declaration of Independence, which the museum stages as the guiding light on the path to liberation and ever expanding freedom. In the end, the museum's embrace of a narrative of racial uplift prevents a fuller discussion of the enduring racial discrimination today.
This essay disscusses the contributions of private collections of African American Art and Histor... more This essay disscusses the contributions of private collections of African American Art and History to developing African American identity and to creating a venue for exhibiting African American art when public institutions or commercial galleries were failing to do so.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Collecting / Collective Identity: Collections and Remembering African American Art and History.” Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2019. pp. 1–41.
This essay looks at the representation of violent responses to terrorism in the Avenger films, fo... more This essay looks at the representation of violent responses to terrorism in the Avenger films, focusing on the treatment of civilian victims and "collateral damage" in Iron Man (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and Marvel's The Avengers (2012).
Gruenewald, Tim. “Superhero Films After 9/11: Mitigating ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Imperial Benevolence: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11. Ed. Tim Gruenewald and Scott Laderman. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 141–167. Print.
Wayne Wang (1949–present) occupies a unique position among Chinese American directors working in ... more Wayne Wang (1949–present) occupies a unique position among Chinese American directors working in the United States as he has enjoyed a long and productive career spanning more than 30 years. Unlike most filmmakers, Wang has moved back and forth between independent filmmaking with experimental characteristics and mainstream commercial Hollywood productions. After early success with his pioneering Chinese American film Chan is Missing (Wang, 1982), audiences and film critics were wondering what happened to the ‘independent’ after a string of several commercial Hollywood films during the early 2000s. In 2007 and 2008, Wang returned to independent film production with A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007) and even formal experimentation in The Princess of Nebraska (2008). Both films benefit from violations of mainstream Hollywood film form in the areas of editing, subtitling, camera, mise-en-scène and narrative. Wang could realize these projects through innovative financing using the strategy of shadow film and pioneering new approaches to distribution by premiering The Princess of Nebraska on YouTube.
Editorial for the special issue of Asian Cinema (29.1) "East-West Flows: Cinematic currents betwe... more Editorial for the special issue of Asian Cinema (29.1) "East-West Flows: Cinematic currents between China and the United States." Includes a brief historical sketch of Asian American filmmaking in the United States.
From 2005 to 2008, three seasons of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender wer... more From 2005 to 2008, three seasons of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender were first broadcast on Nickelodeon. Although the show premiered on a children’s channel, its reach extended far beyond that demographic. It became a global hit and spawned a vast fandom in the United States and beyond. Among the fans were graphic novelists Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim. This chapter analyzes Yang's adaptation of the Avatar franchize to the graphic novel with a particular focus on the fan activism (including Yang's) in protest of Hollywood's adaptation Airbender (2010).
Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 2012
This essay discusses the representation of Islam in the television of Alexander Kluge.
Gruene... more This essay discusses the representation of Islam in the television of Alexander Kluge.
Gruenewald, Tim. " Reframing Islam in Television: Alexander Kluge’s Interviews on Islam and Terrorism since 9/11." In: Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 331-351.
Gruenewald, Tim. “All Quiet at the Western Front.” In: The Thirties in America. Pasadena, Ca: Sal... more Gruenewald, Tim. “All Quiet at the Western Front.” In: The Thirties in America. Pasadena, Ca: Salem Press, 2011.
The feature documentary Sacred Ground explores the connection between the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Wounded Knee Massacre site. Mount Rushmore is an icon of the United States, attracting millions of visitors each year whereas Wounded Knee, only a two-hour drive away, receives just a handful of visitors each day. Mount Rushmore is carved into the granite spires of the Black Hills, which are sacred to the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre and their descendants. Today, Wounded Knee is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States with social and economic standards comparable to those of developing nations. By contrast, Mount Rushmore is a hub of tourism and commerce. The film approaches contrasts and the complex web of past and present relationships between the two memory sites through visual montage and interviews with the people who live at, work at and visit each of the memorials.
Gruenewald, Tim. “The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway. By Alexander Graf.” Scope Spr... more Gruenewald, Tim. “The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway. By Alexander Graf.” Scope Spring (2005),
During the global BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finall... more During the global BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finally face its painful past. Tim Gruenewald's new book is an in-depth investigation of how that past is currently remembered at the national museums in Washington, DC. Curating America's Painful Past reveals how the tragic past is either minimized or framed in a way that does not threaten dominant national ideologies. Gruenewald analyzes the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
The NMAH, the nation's most popular history museum, serves as the benchmark for the imagination of US history and identity. The USHMM opened in 1993 as the United States' official Holocaust memorial and stands adjacent to the National Mall. Gruenewald makes a persuasive case that the USHMM established a successful blueprint for narrating horrific and traumatic histories. Curating America's Painful Past contrasts these two museums to ask why America's painful memories were largely absent from the memorial landscape of the National Mall and argues that social injustices in the present cannot be addressed until the nation's painful past is fully acknowledged and remembered.
It was only with the opening of the NMAAHC in 2016 that a detailed account of atrocities committed against African Americans appeared on the National Mall. Gruenewald focuses on the museum's narrative structure in the context of national discourse to provide a critical reading of the museum. When the NMAI opened in 2004, it presented for the first time a detailed history from a Native American perspective that sought to undo conventional museum narratives. However, criticism led to more traditional exhibitions and national focus. Nevertheless, the museum still marginalizes memories of the vast numbers of Indigenous victims to European colonization and to US expansion. In a final chapter, Gruenewald offers a thought experiment, imagining a memory site like the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama) situated on the National Mall so the reader can assess how profound an effect projects of national memory can have on facing the past as a matter of present justice.
Please find the preface and chapter 1 attached.
Please see here for ordering the book:
https://tinyurl.com/bdcc45w2
http://bit.do/tgruene
The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of Afri... more http://bit.do/tgruene The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of African American art and history in the world today. The collection spans five-hundred years of African American intellectual and artistic impacts, and shifts the memory of African American history from victimhood to an emphasis of social and cultural achievement. Through selected pieces in The Kinsey Collection, Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection explains how African Americans have influenced the course of history and art through aesthetic, intellectual, and political innovation. Together, the contributors exemplify the role of memory and bring to light prominent figures of African American history, not yet fully appreciated for their contributions. These essays encourage a deeper understanding of creative ways of resisting and contributing, which African Americans have shown consistently throughout U.S. history. To date, the collection has exhibited in twenty-four major art and history museums around the country including the Norton Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, The DuSable Museum and the Underground Railroad Museum.
http://bit.do/tgruene2
This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United... more http://bit.do/tgruene2 This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United States' endless wars. Investigating multiple genres of popular culture alongside contemporary U.S. foreign policy and political economy, Imperial Benevolence shows that American popular culture continuously suppresses awareness of U.S. imperialism while assuming American exceptionalism and innocence. This is despite the fact that it is rarely a product of the state. Expertly coordinated essays by prominent historians and media scholars address the ways that movies and television series such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Avengers, and even The Walking Dead, as well as video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, have largely presented the United States as a global force for good. Popular culture, with few exceptions, has depicted the U.S. as a reluctant hegemon fiercely defending human rights and protecting or expanding democracy from the barbarians determined to destroy it.
http://bit.do/tgruene3
This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chin... more http://bit.do/tgruene3 This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chinese filmmakers working in the United States.
Lissa Crofton-Sleigh and Brian Beams (eds.) Past and Future Presence: Approaches for Implementing XR Technology in Humanities and Art Education (Amherst College Press), 2024
This chapter explores the use of VR technology for virtual field trips in area studies. The discu... more This chapter explores the use of VR technology for virtual field trips in area studies. The discussion is based on two virtual field trip courses to the United States that were conducted at the University of Hong Kong in 2021 and 2022. After a review of the literature on virtual field trips, the chapter introduces three core principles of the course design. First, experiential learning: VR enables embodied experiences with strong physical, emotional, and social impact that uniquely complement conventional media in the classroom. Second, interactive learning: interactivity is a strength of VR and can be leveraged to enhance teaching and learning. Third, value-added use of technology: use of VR should improve teaching and learning in a way that cannot be achieved through other (i.e. simpler) means. The main part of the chapter concerns the course structure, limitations of current VR technology and content, the selection of VR platforms for teaching. The chapter also discusses two examples of how VR was implemented: first, in a course section on Wounded Knee, Native American history and memory, and, second, in a section on systemic inequity in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Virtual Reality (VR) film has been described as an empathy machine. Filmmakers and producers have claimed that VR film’s immersive qualities can amplify empathy for victims of humanitarian crises and move the viewer to support humanitarian aid organizations. This paper questions these transformative assumptions about VR film. We call attention to how humanitarian VR films are techniques that promote emotional styles like empathy through the script of suffering and hope. Through analysis of humanitarian VR films, the use of character, narrative, and formal VR film devices, we show how empathy is created. Thereby, we focus specifically on the simulation of particular locales, intimate encounters with the suffering Other, and gratification of viewer needs. The paper concludes that humanitarian VR films simulate an engagement with global problems when, in fact, they are catering to the emotional needs of people engaging with those problems. The global citizen as a feeling self becomes caught in interpersonal affective textures, which obscure geopolitical causes of humanitarian crises. Hence, the paper questions empathy as a universal way to better the world and diverges from the celebration of humanitarian VR film as a universal empathy machine.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum (9/11 MM) employs affective rhetoric to enshrine th... more The National September 11 Memorial and Museum (9/11 MM) employs affective rhetoric to enshrine the trauma of September 11 in support of U.S. nationalism. Applying Brian Massumi's understanding of affect as intensity, I examine how the site's rhetoric amplifies affect. The memorial pools and many signifiers of destruction magnify affective intensity through scale and repetition. The 9/11 MM continues its affective onslaught through an excessive number of shocking visuals and narrative details in its historical exhibition. The site's affective intensity culminates in a non-linear and non-narrative memorial space of seemingly infinite individualized mourning. The article discusses the site's political and social impact by considering Nigel Thrift's idea of affect in the built environment as imbedded thought and Georg Böhme's theory of atmosphere, understood as the reciprocal relationship between affective urban space and its impact on people.
This essay examines the National Museum of African American History and Culture, focusing on the ... more This essay examines the National Museum of African American History and Culture, focusing on the historical galleries and especially the slavery exhibition, and argues that the museum embraces a narrative of liberation and national progress that reaffirms dominant ideologies of the United States. The inclusion of African American history at the nation's memorial core, and especially the painful history of slavery and Jim Crow, would present an opportunity to critique the ideologies of freedom and equality that have been proclaimed as core national values ever since the Declaration of Independence. Analyzing the museum's narrative structure and spatial configurations, I argue that the museum singles out Thomas Jefferson while failing to mention that many Founding Fathers owned slaves, most notably George Washington. Ultimately, Jefferson, too, is redeemed as the author of the Declaration of Independence, which the museum stages as the guiding light on the path to liberation and ever expanding freedom. In the end, the museum's embrace of a narrative of racial uplift prevents a fuller discussion of the enduring racial discrimination today.
This essay disscusses the contributions of private collections of African American Art and Histor... more This essay disscusses the contributions of private collections of African American Art and History to developing African American identity and to creating a venue for exhibiting African American art when public institutions or commercial galleries were failing to do so.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Collecting / Collective Identity: Collections and Remembering African American Art and History.” Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2019. pp. 1–41.
This essay looks at the representation of violent responses to terrorism in the Avenger films, fo... more This essay looks at the representation of violent responses to terrorism in the Avenger films, focusing on the treatment of civilian victims and "collateral damage" in Iron Man (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and Marvel's The Avengers (2012).
Gruenewald, Tim. “Superhero Films After 9/11: Mitigating ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Imperial Benevolence: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11. Ed. Tim Gruenewald and Scott Laderman. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 141–167. Print.
Wayne Wang (1949–present) occupies a unique position among Chinese American directors working in ... more Wayne Wang (1949–present) occupies a unique position among Chinese American directors working in the United States as he has enjoyed a long and productive career spanning more than 30 years. Unlike most filmmakers, Wang has moved back and forth between independent filmmaking with experimental characteristics and mainstream commercial Hollywood productions. After early success with his pioneering Chinese American film Chan is Missing (Wang, 1982), audiences and film critics were wondering what happened to the ‘independent’ after a string of several commercial Hollywood films during the early 2000s. In 2007 and 2008, Wang returned to independent film production with A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007) and even formal experimentation in The Princess of Nebraska (2008). Both films benefit from violations of mainstream Hollywood film form in the areas of editing, subtitling, camera, mise-en-scène and narrative. Wang could realize these projects through innovative financing using the strategy of shadow film and pioneering new approaches to distribution by premiering The Princess of Nebraska on YouTube.
Editorial for the special issue of Asian Cinema (29.1) "East-West Flows: Cinematic currents betwe... more Editorial for the special issue of Asian Cinema (29.1) "East-West Flows: Cinematic currents between China and the United States." Includes a brief historical sketch of Asian American filmmaking in the United States.
From 2005 to 2008, three seasons of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender wer... more From 2005 to 2008, three seasons of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender were first broadcast on Nickelodeon. Although the show premiered on a children’s channel, its reach extended far beyond that demographic. It became a global hit and spawned a vast fandom in the United States and beyond. Among the fans were graphic novelists Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim. This chapter analyzes Yang's adaptation of the Avatar franchize to the graphic novel with a particular focus on the fan activism (including Yang's) in protest of Hollywood's adaptation Airbender (2010).
Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 2012
This essay discusses the representation of Islam in the television of Alexander Kluge.
Gruene... more This essay discusses the representation of Islam in the television of Alexander Kluge.
Gruenewald, Tim. " Reframing Islam in Television: Alexander Kluge’s Interviews on Islam and Terrorism since 9/11." In: Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 331-351.
Gruenewald, Tim. “All Quiet at the Western Front.” In: The Thirties in America. Pasadena, Ca: Sal... more Gruenewald, Tim. “All Quiet at the Western Front.” In: The Thirties in America. Pasadena, Ca: Salem Press, 2011.
The feature documentary Sacred Ground explores the connection between the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Wounded Knee Massacre site. Mount Rushmore is an icon of the United States, attracting millions of visitors each year whereas Wounded Knee, only a two-hour drive away, receives just a handful of visitors each day. Mount Rushmore is carved into the granite spires of the Black Hills, which are sacred to the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre and their descendants. Today, Wounded Knee is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States with social and economic standards comparable to those of developing nations. By contrast, Mount Rushmore is a hub of tourism and commerce. The film approaches contrasts and the complex web of past and present relationships between the two memory sites through visual montage and interviews with the people who live at, work at and visit each of the memorials.
Gruenewald, Tim. “The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway. By Alexander Graf.” Scope Spr... more Gruenewald, Tim. “The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway. By Alexander Graf.” Scope Spring (2005),
Since the release of several consumer grade virtual reality (VR) headsets starting in 2016, conte... more Since the release of several consumer grade virtual reality (VR) headsets starting in 2016, content production of narrative 360° film and VR experiences has exploded. The new medium has presented filmmakers with the task of adapting film form to the immersive experience. At the same time, such challenges have offered a rare opportunity to develop a new film language that only comes with fundamental developments in film technology, as was the case in the past with the advent of sound, color, or film itself. Editing in VR is particularly challenging because of the embodied viewing experience in VR, for which most conventional editing practices are not suitable. After a brief summary of basic problems and solutions, this talk introduces some of the most innovative narrative 360° and VR films to explore the creative ways that filmmakers have developed for editing VR narratives.
Gruenewald, Tim. The “Real” China: Manufacturing Tropes in United States and Canadian Documentari... more Gruenewald, Tim. The “Real” China: Manufacturing Tropes in United States and Canadian Documentaries. China in Foreign Eyes Symposium. The University of Hong Kong, 2016. Unpublished Lecture.
This paper introduces recent documentaries about China from the United States and Canda.
Gruenewald, Tim. Transforming Visual Ethnography, Transforming Cinema - Violations of Cinematic C... more Gruenewald, Tim. Transforming Visual Ethnography, Transforming Cinema - Violations of Cinematic Conventions in Trinh T. Minh-ha's Ethnographic Films. Modern Language Association Convention, San Diego, December 2003. Unpublished Conference Paper.
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The NMAH, the nation's most popular history museum, serves as the benchmark for the imagination of US history and identity. The USHMM opened in 1993 as the United States' official Holocaust memorial and stands adjacent to the National Mall. Gruenewald makes a persuasive case that the USHMM established a successful blueprint for narrating horrific and traumatic histories. Curating America's Painful Past contrasts these two museums to ask why America's painful memories were largely absent from the memorial landscape of the National Mall and argues that social injustices in the present cannot be addressed until the nation's painful past is fully acknowledged and remembered.
It was only with the opening of the NMAAHC in 2016 that a detailed account of atrocities committed against African Americans appeared on the National Mall. Gruenewald focuses on the museum's narrative structure in the context of national discourse to provide a critical reading of the museum. When the NMAI opened in 2004, it presented for the first time a detailed history from a Native American perspective that sought to undo conventional museum narratives. However, criticism led to more traditional exhibitions and national focus. Nevertheless, the museum still marginalizes memories of the vast numbers of Indigenous victims to European colonization and to US expansion. In a final chapter, Gruenewald offers a thought experiment, imagining a memory site like the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama) situated on the National Mall so the reader can assess how profound an effect projects of national memory can have on facing the past as a matter of present justice.
Please find the preface and chapter 1 attached.
Please see here for ordering the book:
https://tinyurl.com/bdcc45w2
The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of African American art and history in the world today. The collection spans five-hundred years of African American intellectual and artistic impacts, and shifts the memory of African American history from victimhood to an emphasis of social and cultural achievement. Through selected pieces in The Kinsey Collection, Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection explains how African Americans have influenced the course of history and art through aesthetic, intellectual, and political innovation. Together, the contributors exemplify the role of memory and bring to light prominent figures of African American history, not yet fully appreciated for their contributions. These essays encourage a deeper understanding of creative ways of resisting and contributing, which African Americans have shown consistently throughout U.S. history. To date, the collection has exhibited in twenty-four major art and history museums around the country including the Norton Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, The DuSable Museum and the Underground Railroad Museum.
This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United States' endless wars. Investigating multiple genres of popular culture alongside contemporary U.S. foreign policy and political economy, Imperial Benevolence shows that American popular culture continuously suppresses awareness of U.S. imperialism while assuming American exceptionalism and innocence. This is despite the fact that it is rarely a product of the state. Expertly coordinated essays by prominent historians and media scholars address the ways that movies and television series such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Avengers, and even The Walking Dead, as well as video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, have largely presented the United States as a global force for good. Popular culture, with few exceptions, has depicted the U.S. as a reluctant hegemon fiercely defending human rights and protecting or expanding democracy from the barbarians determined to destroy it.
This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chinese filmmakers working in the United States.
Please see here for preordering the book: https://services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/P/Past-and-Future-Presence
If you are working on a related topic, feel free to reach out for a preprint copy of my essay.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9R9KQJVWVNXM88JNVTUW/full?target=10.1080/09502386.2020.1761415
Virtual Reality (VR) film has been described as an empathy machine. Filmmakers and producers have claimed that VR film’s immersive qualities can amplify empathy for victims of humanitarian crises and move the viewer to support humanitarian aid organizations. This paper questions these transformative assumptions about VR film. We call attention to how humanitarian VR films are techniques that promote emotional styles like empathy through the script of suffering and hope. Through analysis of humanitarian VR films, the use of character, narrative, and formal VR film devices, we show how empathy is created. Thereby, we focus specifically on the simulation of particular locales, intimate encounters with the suffering Other, and gratification of viewer needs. The paper concludes that humanitarian VR films simulate an engagement with global problems when, in fact, they are catering to the emotional needs of people engaging with those problems. The global citizen as a feeling self becomes caught in interpersonal affective textures, which obscure geopolitical causes of humanitarian crises. Hence, the paper questions empathy as a universal way to better the world and diverges from the celebration of humanitarian VR film as a universal empathy machine.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Collecting / Collective Identity: Collections and Remembering African American Art and History.” Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2019. pp. 1–41.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Superhero Films After 9/11: Mitigating ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Imperial Benevolence: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11. Ed. Tim Gruenewald and Scott Laderman. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 141–167. Print.
Includes a brief historical sketch of Asian American filmmaking in the United States.
Gruenewald, Tim. " Reframing Islam in Television: Alexander Kluge’s Interviews on Islam and Terrorism since 9/11." In: Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 331-351.
http://www.sacredgroundfilm.com/trailer.html
The feature documentary Sacred Ground explores the connection between the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Wounded Knee Massacre site. Mount Rushmore is an icon of the United States, attracting millions of visitors each year whereas Wounded Knee, only a two-hour drive away, receives just a handful of visitors each day. Mount Rushmore is carved into the granite spires of the Black Hills, which are sacred to the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre and their descendants. Today, Wounded Knee is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States with social and economic standards comparable to those of developing nations. By contrast, Mount Rushmore is a hub of tourism and commerce. The film approaches contrasts and the complex web of past and present relationships between the two memory sites through visual montage and interviews with the people who live at, work at and visit each of the memorials.
The NMAH, the nation's most popular history museum, serves as the benchmark for the imagination of US history and identity. The USHMM opened in 1993 as the United States' official Holocaust memorial and stands adjacent to the National Mall. Gruenewald makes a persuasive case that the USHMM established a successful blueprint for narrating horrific and traumatic histories. Curating America's Painful Past contrasts these two museums to ask why America's painful memories were largely absent from the memorial landscape of the National Mall and argues that social injustices in the present cannot be addressed until the nation's painful past is fully acknowledged and remembered.
It was only with the opening of the NMAAHC in 2016 that a detailed account of atrocities committed against African Americans appeared on the National Mall. Gruenewald focuses on the museum's narrative structure in the context of national discourse to provide a critical reading of the museum. When the NMAI opened in 2004, it presented for the first time a detailed history from a Native American perspective that sought to undo conventional museum narratives. However, criticism led to more traditional exhibitions and national focus. Nevertheless, the museum still marginalizes memories of the vast numbers of Indigenous victims to European colonization and to US expansion. In a final chapter, Gruenewald offers a thought experiment, imagining a memory site like the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama) situated on the National Mall so the reader can assess how profound an effect projects of national memory can have on facing the past as a matter of present justice.
Please find the preface and chapter 1 attached.
Please see here for ordering the book:
https://tinyurl.com/bdcc45w2
The Kinsey Collection is one of the preeminent private collections of African American art and history in the world today. The collection spans five-hundred years of African American intellectual and artistic impacts, and shifts the memory of African American history from victimhood to an emphasis of social and cultural achievement. Through selected pieces in The Kinsey Collection, Rethinking America's Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection explains how African Americans have influenced the course of history and art through aesthetic, intellectual, and political innovation. Together, the contributors exemplify the role of memory and bring to light prominent figures of African American history, not yet fully appreciated for their contributions. These essays encourage a deeper understanding of creative ways of resisting and contributing, which African Americans have shown consistently throughout U.S. history. To date, the collection has exhibited in twenty-four major art and history museums around the country including the Norton Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, The DuSable Museum and the Underground Railroad Museum.
This is a necessary and urgent read for anyone concerned about the United States' endless wars. Investigating multiple genres of popular culture alongside contemporary U.S. foreign policy and political economy, Imperial Benevolence shows that American popular culture continuously suppresses awareness of U.S. imperialism while assuming American exceptionalism and innocence. This is despite the fact that it is rarely a product of the state. Expertly coordinated essays by prominent historians and media scholars address the ways that movies and television series such as Zero Dark Thirty, The Avengers, and even The Walking Dead, as well as video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, have largely presented the United States as a global force for good. Popular culture, with few exceptions, has depicted the U.S. as a reluctant hegemon fiercely defending human rights and protecting or expanding democracy from the barbarians determined to destroy it.
This special issue of Asian Cinema Journal presents papers on recent Chinese filmmakers working in the United States.
Please see here for preordering the book: https://services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/P/Past-and-Future-Presence
If you are working on a related topic, feel free to reach out for a preprint copy of my essay.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9R9KQJVWVNXM88JNVTUW/full?target=10.1080/09502386.2020.1761415
Virtual Reality (VR) film has been described as an empathy machine. Filmmakers and producers have claimed that VR film’s immersive qualities can amplify empathy for victims of humanitarian crises and move the viewer to support humanitarian aid organizations. This paper questions these transformative assumptions about VR film. We call attention to how humanitarian VR films are techniques that promote emotional styles like empathy through the script of suffering and hope. Through analysis of humanitarian VR films, the use of character, narrative, and formal VR film devices, we show how empathy is created. Thereby, we focus specifically on the simulation of particular locales, intimate encounters with the suffering Other, and gratification of viewer needs. The paper concludes that humanitarian VR films simulate an engagement with global problems when, in fact, they are catering to the emotional needs of people engaging with those problems. The global citizen as a feeling self becomes caught in interpersonal affective textures, which obscure geopolitical causes of humanitarian crises. Hence, the paper questions empathy as a universal way to better the world and diverges from the celebration of humanitarian VR film as a universal empathy machine.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Collecting / Collective Identity: Collections and Remembering African American Art and History.” Rethinking America’s Past: Voices from the Kinsey African American Art and History Collection. Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 2019. pp. 1–41.
Gruenewald, Tim. “Superhero Films After 9/11: Mitigating ‘Collateral Damage’ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Imperial Benevolence: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Popular Culture since 9/11. Ed. Tim Gruenewald and Scott Laderman. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 141–167. Print.
Includes a brief historical sketch of Asian American filmmaking in the United States.
Gruenewald, Tim. " Reframing Islam in Television: Alexander Kluge’s Interviews on Islam and Terrorism since 9/11." In: Tara Forrest (ed.), Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), pp. 331-351.
http://www.sacredgroundfilm.com/trailer.html
The feature documentary Sacred Ground explores the connection between the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Wounded Knee Massacre site. Mount Rushmore is an icon of the United States, attracting millions of visitors each year whereas Wounded Knee, only a two-hour drive away, receives just a handful of visitors each day. Mount Rushmore is carved into the granite spires of the Black Hills, which are sacred to the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre and their descendants. Today, Wounded Knee is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States with social and economic standards comparable to those of developing nations. By contrast, Mount Rushmore is a hub of tourism and commerce. The film approaches contrasts and the complex web of past and present relationships between the two memory sites through visual montage and interviews with the people who live at, work at and visit each of the memorials.
This paper introduces recent documentaries about China from the United States and Canda.