Postdoctoral Associate Fellow

E-mail: m dot slugan dot 1 at warwick dot ac dot uk
Tel: (024) 765 24419
Millburn House
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7HS

About

Dr Mario Slugan is a Postdoctoral Associate Fellow at the Department of Film and Television Studies and the Department of German Studies. He holds degrees in Computer Science, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Slavic Studies, German Studies, and Film and Television Studies. At the University of Warwick, he has led seminars for modules “Theories of the Moving Image I” and “Theories of Moving Image II”. His first book - Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (Camden House, 2017) - argues that to understand the inter-medial history of montage one needs to analyse the reception of film and literary artworks (particularly Berlin Alexanderplatz) as much as their formal features. The second, Noël Carroll on Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture (2018, I. B. Tauris, forthcoming), looks at the interrelationship between analytic philosophy and film studies on the example of a renowned philosopher of aesthetics and film theorist Noël Carroll. His third book is currently in progress (Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema: A New Film History, under contract for I.B. Tauris). He is also the managing editor of an open-access peer-reviewed academic journal Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. Most recently, he has become Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Research and Teaching Interests

Film theory; film and philosophy; Avant-garde and modernist cinema and literature; early cinema; German cinema and literature; American cinema; British cinema; Eastern European cinemas; adaptation

Monographs

Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (Camden House, 2017)

Noël Carroll on Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture (I. B. Tauris, 2018, forthcoming)

Work in Progress

Monograph: Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema: A New Film History. [under contract with I.B. Tauris]

Special Issue: Fiction in Central and Eastern European Film Theory and Practice. [co-editing with Alexander Bareis for Apparatus: Film, Media, & Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, Spring 2019]

Conference Organization

Conference Co-organizer with Daniel Biltereyst, Rethinking the Attraction-Narrative Dialectics: New Approaches to Early Cinema, Ghent University, Belgium, Nov 9-10, 2018 http://earlycinemaconference.com/

Conference Co-organizer with Enrico Terrone, Analytic Aesthetics and Film Studies, University of Warwick, UK, Oct 26-27, 2018 https://aestheticsfilmstudies.weebly.com/

Peer-reviewed Articles (selection)

“Taking Bazin Literally,” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 11(1), 2017: 63-82 http://dx.doi.org/10:3167/proj.2017.110105

“Late 1920s Film Theory and Criticism as a Test-Case for Benjamin’s Generalizations on the Experiential Effects of Editing,” Early Popular Visual Culture 14(3), 2016: 215-233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2016.1199322 (Honourable mention, 2017 BAFTSS Best Journal Article Award: http://baftss.org/awards/outstanding-achievement-award/awards-2017/)

“Deixis in Literary and Film Fiction: Intra-Ontological Reference and the Case of the Controlling Fictional Narrator,” in J. Alexander Bareis and Lene Nordrum (eds.) How to Make Believe: The Fictional Truths of Representational Arts, New York; Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2015: 185-202.

“The Rhetorics of Interpretation and Žižek’s Approach to Film,” Slavic Review, 72(4), 2013: 728-749. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.72.4.0728
Elicited a response from: Slavoj Žižek, “Reply,” Slavic Review, 72(4), 2013: 771-777.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.72.4.0771 

“Epistemology as Ethics: Skepticism in Blade Runner,” Film and Philosophy, 16, 2011: 82-100.

“Responses to Balkanism in Emir Kusturica’s Život je čudo/Life Is a Miracle (2004),” Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2(1), 2011: 37-48. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/seec.2.1.37_1

Non-peer-reviewed Publications (selection)

Book Review: “Early Cinema in Asia,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 38(3), 2018 [forthcoming]:
https://doi.org/10.1080/01439685.2018.1524558

Book Review: “The German Joyce,” Comparative Critical Studies, 15(1), 2018: 119-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/ccs.2018.0264

Book Review: “The Use and Abuse of Cinema: German Legacies from the Weimar Era to the Present,” Studies in European Cinemas, 13(2), 2016: 1-2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2016.1234834

Book Review: “Generic Histories of German Cinema,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 22(4), 2014: 525-526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2014.975463

“Reply to Žižek,” Slavic Review, 73(2), 2014: 453-454. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.73.2.453 

Book Review: “Jacques Ranciere’s ‘Film Fables’,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 71, 2012.

“Some Methodological Concerns Regarding the Study of Balkanism in Cinema,” The Slavic Forum, 2011. http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/theslavicforum/slavic-forum-2011/

“The Problem of the General Narrator in Fiction Film,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 67, 2011: 33-41.

Recent Film Criticism

“You Were Never Really Here,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 93-94, 2018

“A Brief Excursion,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 92, 2018

“The Young Pope,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 90-91, 2017

“The Young Pope,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 89, 2017

“Dheepan,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 86-87, 2016

“The Revenant,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 85, 2016

“It Follows,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 84, 2016

“A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 82-83, 2015.

“Broj 55,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 81, 2015.

“12 Years a Slave,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 77-78, 2014.

“Under the Skin,” Croatian Radio 3, Filmoskop, broadcast on October 11, 2014.

“Spring Breakers,” Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, 75, 2014.

Recent Conference Presentations and Panel Organization

“Engaging the Photographic Image: Mandated Imagining Seeing or Recognition?” Image Conference, Hong Kong, Nov 3–4, 2018 [accepted]

“Early Cinema’s ‘Fake Films’ as a Historical Lesson for Tackling Present-Day ‘Fake News’,” MediAsia, Tokyo, Oct 9-11, 2018

“Reviving the Early Cinema Lecture Experience for Contemporary Audiences”, New Approaches to Silent Film Historiography, Leeds, Sep 18-19, 2018

“Is Cognitivism Imperialistic? A Defence of Carroll,” Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, Canterbury, Jul 1-4, 2018

“Staged Re-Enactments in Early Cinema: Fake, Fact, Fiction,” Screen Studies Conference, Glasgow, Jun 29 – Jul 1, 2018

“Reconstructing the ‘Fake Film’ Genre through Contemporary Marketing and Reception Materials,” HoMER@NECS Conference, Amsterdam, Jun 27-29, 2018

“R. W. Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz as a Remake”, Remaking European Cinema, Ghent, Jun 1, 2018

“Early Cinema as a Test-Case for Intentionalist Definitions of Documentary: Historicizing Asserted Veridical Representation in Train and Trick Films”, Docusophia, Tel Aviv, May 22-24, 2018

“Do Analog Photographs Mandate Imaging Seeing? A Challenge to Walton”, Dubrovnik Conference on the Philosophy of Art, Dubrovnik, Apr 23-27, 2018 [accepted]

“The Changing Status of Early Passion Plays: Profilmic, Illustrative, and Imaginary”, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, Canterbury, Apr 12-13, 2018

“The Notion of Virtual in Early Cinema: Panoramas, Hale’s Tours, and Fake Newsreels,” The Aesthetic Potential of the Virtual Conference, Paris, Mar 28-30, 2018

“Audience Reception of Reenactments in the US and Western Europe around 1900: Fake, Staged, and Fiction,” Researching Past Cinema Audiences: Archives, Memories and Methods Conference, Aberystwyth, Mar 26-28, 2018 [accepted]

“Crime Reconstructions in Early Cinema: The Threat to Public Morals and the Fact/Fiction Distinction,” Historical Fictions Conference, Stoke-on-Trent, Feb 24-25, 2018

“The Role of Montage in Berlin Alexanderplatz,” Internationales Alfred-Döblin-Kolloquium, Cambridge, Sep 18-20, 2017

“Towards a definition of the Moving Image: An Alternative to Carroll,” British Society for Aesthetics, Oxford, Sep 8-10, 2017

“Photography and Imagining Seeing,” Imagination across the Analytic-Continental Divide, Antwerp, Aug 16-18

“The Analog/Digital Distinction Revisited”, Film and Philosophy, Lancaster, Jul 4-6, 2017

“Bazinian Idenitity as an Alternative to Indexicality for Distinguishing between Analog and Digital Photography,” Society for Cognitive Study of the Moving Image, Helsinki, Jun 11-14, 2017

“Fiction as Genre: An Institutional Account,” British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, Bristol, April 20-21, 2017

“The Lecturer as the Earliest Controlling Fictional Narrator in Cinema,” Narratology and Its Discontents, Zagreb Apr 6-8, 2017

“The Fictional Status of Historical Reenactments,” Historical Fictions Research Network, London, February 24-25, 2017

“Why Analog Photography Enjoys Privileged Access to Reality,” The Real of Reality, Karlsruhe, Nov 2-6, 2016

“Bringing the Lecturer Back to Life,” German Screen Studies Network Symposium, London, Sep 8-10, 2016

“Fiction Film: A Non-Intentionalist Account,” The European Society for Aesthetics, Barcelona, Jun 8-10, 2016

“Towards a Definition of Fiction in Cinema: The Interplay of Intention, Film Style, Reception, and Institutional Framework,” Society for Cognitive Study of the Moving Image, Ithaca, NY, Jun 1-4, 2016

Panel Organizer: “Early Cinema and Literary Modernism,” Modern Languages Association Conference, Austin, TX, Jan 7-10, 2016

“Montage and Representation of the City in Phil Jutzi’s Adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz,” Adaptation Association Conference, London, Sep 24-25, 2015

“The Role of Catalogues for Early Cinema History,” HoMER Network Conference, Glasgow, Jun 22-24, 2015

“Taking Bazin Literally,” Society for Cognitive Study of the Moving Image, London, Jun 17-21, 2015

“A Reinterpretation of Bazin: Where Indexicality and Transparency Fall Short,” Film and Reality, Lisbon, May 6-10, 2014

“The Ontological and the Stylistic Status of the Document in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz,” North Modern Languages Association, Harrisburg, Apr 3-6, 2014

“The Myth of the Ontologically Privileged Cinema: Indexicality, Transparency and Bazin,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, Mar 19-23, 2014

Teaching Experience

University of Warwick

Seminar Leader, Theories of the Moving Image I

Seminar Leader, Theories of the Moving Image II

University of Chicago

Course Instructor, Introduction to Film

Course Assistant, Women Mystery Writers: From Page to Screen

King's College London

A Year in the Life of German-Language Film: 1930

Ghent University

Module Leader, Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory

Module Leader, Formal and Historical Film Analysis