Vassilis Kroustallis wins 2016 McLaren-Lambert Article Award

The Society for Animation Studies, has the pleasure to announce that Vassilis Kroustallis’ article, “Failure to Think, Failure to Move: Handicapped Reasoning in Waltz with Bashir,” has received the 2016 Norman McLaren – Evelyn Lambart Award for the Best Scholarly Article in Animation published 2014-2015.  Kroustallis’ is a Doctoral Candidate at Ionian University, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Greece. The article was published by Jewish Film and New Media Journal.

As Chair I want to point out that the jury process was considerable and spanned evaluation by numerous readers across a six-month period. The submissions were redacted versions without author or publisher visibly listed and there were numerous readers who were charged with not only evaluating content, but evaluating the work as relevant scholarship, per se. Jurors are knowledgeable in the study and practice of animation and the digital arts and were invited to read submissions from the perspective of global scholarship and academic writing that crosses media, cinema, performance, composition, media anthropology and visual arts disciplines.

The selection for the award was juried by scholars and practitioners whose academic scholarship, practice, and/or research is either in animation; aesthetics; the digital arts and media; cinema studies and digital humanities and/or media anthropology and film.

Jurors and short bios:

::Marco Bellano, Ph.D. was selected for the 2013 Best Scholarly Article in Animation Award. Dr. Bellano is a Professor (Adjunct) of History of Animation at the University of Padua, Italy, and of History of Italian Cinema at the Boston University Study Abroad Program, Padua.  Dr. Bellano serves as a Member of the editorial committee of the cinema journal Cabiria and is, himself, a musician and composer having studied at the Conservatory of Music,“A. Pedrollo,” Venice.

::Marit Kathryn Corneil, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor and Doctoral Fellow in film studies at the Department of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where she received the Degree Cand. Pilol for her dissertation: Challenge for Change: an experiment in ethical documentary at the National Film Board of Canada.  Dr. Corneil’s research interests are in documentary film history and theory (including animated and experimental documentary)’ new media /digital technology and social media; and sound in documentary.

::Stacey Steers is a practicing animation artist and Lecturer in Film Studies at Colorado University Boulder. A Guggenheim Fellow, Steers is interested in investigating the nature of longing, and explores the ways desire provokes and mediates experience to create meaning. Steers’ animated short films have screened widely throughout the U.S. and abroad, and have received numerous awards, not the least of which is the Creative Capital Grant.  Her animations have been included in the Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festova;, New Directors New Films (New York), Rotterdam International Film Festival, and screened at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), and Museum of Modern Art (New York), to name a few.

::Winnifred J. Wood, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at Wellesley College in linguistic theory, rhetorical theory, and writing. Dr. Wood’s primary interests are in the ways people use language and image to influence others, to make knowledge, and to change the world. At Wellesley, she directed the writing program from 1992-2009 and currently Co-Directs the Cinema and Media Studies Program. Dr. Wood’s primary research interests are media-related and investigate how people present themselves and argue in online settings, and how language and discourse change across media forms

::Maria Stalford teaches academic writing in the Harvard College Writing Program and as a Media Anthropology Doctoral Candidate her research was affiliated with the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. For her Capstone Defense at Harvard, Stalford presented a critical media practice project entitled, “Night Falls in RadioTherapy 3.”

::Janeann Dill, Ph.D., M.F.A. is Chair of Jury. A fine artist, scholar and experimental animation artist, Dr. Dill is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Art & Creative Intelligence (ThinkTank); and faculty for Critical Studies and Critical Writing Seminars in Animation Histories at Emerson College, Department of Visual and Media Arts, Boston (USA). Dill is the authorized biographer of Jules Engel (1909-2003).

A last note that the expanse of publishing bodies interested in scholarly articles and research in animation studies continues to grow considerably. Here are the publishers (in no particular order) for articles and book chapters submitted this year.