Early Popular Visual Culture

New issue alert: our special double issue on Early Cinema in the British Colonies is out today, guest edited by Mario Slugan and James Burns. You can read the editors' introduction for free here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We're excited to share a call for contributions to an upcoming special issue of EPVC on "Teaching Silent Cinema Today", guest edited by Carolyn Condon Jacobs and @aurspiers.bsky.social.

Share your experiences of teaching silent cinema and your ideas for how it could be taught in the future.

New CFP!! Special Issue of Early Popular Visual Culture @epvcjournal.bsky.social about TEACHING SILENT CINEMA TODAY guest-edited by Carolyn Condon Jacobs and myself!! Please share!!

New (Open Access) article alert: Stephen Putnam Hughes explores what we can learn about early cinema in colonial Bombay, beginning with a single archival photograph doi.org/10.1080/1746...

The latest issue of EPVC is online, featuring new research into Victorian 3-D portraits, stereoscopy and perception, and tiger photography in colonial India www.tandfonline.com/toc/repv20/2...

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! ☘️

Photo of a woman selling drinks to tourists, Gap of Dunloe, Killarney, c. 1890-1914

From Gail Bayliss, ‘Exchanging looks: Gap girls and colleens in early Irish tourist photography’, volume 10, issue 4: doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Image: National Library of Ireland

Happy International Women’s Day! #IWD2025

Image of LE BATEAU DE LÉONTINE (1911, Eye Filmmuseum) from Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak & Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi’s article ‘Gender and the Nasty Women of History’ (2022), part of our special double issue on The Gender of Early Cinema: doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Advert for the New Douglas Theatre, Harlem, from the early sound era (courtesy of Cinema Treasures)

And from our 2023 special issue on The Silent Film Era and Marginalised Spectatorships, Agata Frymus investigates Black moviegoing in the United States during the silent era.

‘White screens, Black fandom: silent film and African American spectatorship in Harlem’: doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Image of P. G. Lowery's Band

From 2017, Sakina M. Hughes explores how African American and Native American performers navigated the world of the travelling circus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

‘Walking the tightrope between racial stereotypes and respectability’: doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Image courtesy of NYPL

Front cover of Uplift Cinema (Duke University Press, 2015)

From 2016, Matthew A. Feltman reviews Allyson Nadia Field’s book Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity (2015): doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Image courtesy of Duke University Press

Portrait photograph of Sojourner Truth

From 2007, Mandy Reid explores the competing uses of photography by 19th-century 'race science' and the abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth

‘Selling Shadows and Substance: Photographing Race in the United States, 1850–1870s’: doi.org/10.1080/1746...

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

As this year’s Black History Month in the USA & Canada comes to a close, we wanted to highlight some of the research into Black visual culture, race and representation published in EPVC... 🧵

Early Popular Visual Culture The British Silent Film Festival and symposium: Part Two. Guest Editor: Chris O’Rourke. Volume 22, Issue 3 of Early Popular Visual Culture

The second part of our special issue on the British Silent Film Festival & Symposium is now online, including open access articles on William Friese-Greene, silent film music and Maurice Elvey www.tandfonline.com/toc/repv20/2...

Book Reviews Editor for post-1900 material:

Dr Aurore Spiers, Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies in the College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts at Texas A&M University, USA.

Research Topics: Feminist film historiography, silent cinema, French and US women filmmakers

Book Reviews Editor for pre-1900 material:

Dr Francesca Arnavas, Research Fellow and Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Tartu, Estonia

Research Topics: Cognitive narratology, Lewis Carroll, Victorian literature, fairy tales

Dr Nadi Tofighian, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the Department of Film and Literature, Linnaeus University, Sweden

Research Topics: Colonial history, early cinema, film distribution, documentary and ethnographic film, postcolonial theory, Southeast Asia

Dr Mario Slugan, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Research Topics: Early cinema in the colonies, understanding of fiction in early cinema

Dr Chris O'Rourke, Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Research Topics: Film history, silent cinema, queer and trans studies, British cinema

Submissions Editor:

Dr Agata Frymus, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Monash University Malaysia

Research Topics: Film history, star studies, race and ethnicity, audiences

Meet the Editorial Team