Katherine Spring

The main focus of my research is film sound and music. I’m interested especially in how changing technologies and industries have influenced the composition of film music and soundtrack design during two historical phenomena: Hollywood’s transition to sound in the late 1920s and the global diffusion of music synthesizers in the 1980s. I’m now working on a book-length history of electronic music in American cinema.

• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Connection Grant (2018), Conference: Classical Hollywood Cinema in the 21st Century.
• Mitacs Globalink Research Internship (2014), Hong Kong Film Music.
• Undergraduate Research Assistantship (2013), Hollywood Composers in the Age of Digital Technologies, 1983-2000.
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant (2011), Hong Kong Film Music in the Age of Digital Media, 1983-1997.
• Short-Term Research Grant (2008), The Popular Song and its Vicissitudes in Early American Sound Cinema.

I welcome graduate students who are pursuing research on subjects of film style, film history, the American film industry, film sound and music, and cognitive studies of film. Occasionally, I have undergraduate and graduate assistantship opportunities for students engaged in primary archival research. Contact me for more information.

I have taught a variety of undergraduate courses, including Film and Narrative; Film History to 1950; American Film 1929-1969; The Film Musical; Classical Film Theory; Hong Kong Cinema; Silent Cinema; Film Sound; and Hollywood Technologies. I regularly teach a graduate seminar on film historiography.

Books

• Spring, Katherine. Saying It With Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• Spring, Katherine. “From Analog to Digital: Synthesizers and Discourses of Film Sound in the 1980s.” The Integrated Soundtrack: Sound Design and Music in Contemporary Film. Eds. Danijela Kulezic and Liz Greene (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
• Spring, Katherine. “Sounding Glocal: Synthesizer Scores in Hong Kong Action Cinema.” Examining Cultural Flows: Chinese-language and American Cinemas. Eds. Lisa Funnell and Man-fung Yip. New York: Routledge (October 2014).
• Spring, Katherine. “Walk This Way: The Pedagogical Value of Soundwalking to the Study of Film Sound.” Spec. issue of Music and the Moving Image 5.2 (Summer 2012): 34-42. 
• Spring, Katherine. “‘To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary’: The Authenticity of Song Performance in Early American Sound Cinema.” Beyond Vitaphone: The Early Sound Short. Spec. issue of Film History: An International Journal 23.3 (2011): 285-99. 
• Spring, Katherine. “Chance Encounters of the Musical Kind: Electronica and Audiovisual Synchronization in Three Films Directed by Tom Tykwer.” Music and the Moving Image 3.3 (2010): n. pag. Web. 15 Aug. 2011.