Laurier expert alert: Toronto International Film Festival and the Emmys

Sept. 8, 2021
For Immediate Release

Waterloo – The 2021 Toronto International Film Festival will be held Sept. 9 to 18 with both in-person and virtual events. The 73rd Emmy Awards will be held on Sept. 19.

Wilfrid Laurier University has several experts available to speak about films, TV shows and popular culture.

Sandra Annett, associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, is an expert in digital new media, fan culture and globalization, anime and manga, and Japanese film and popular culture. She is the author of Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Frictions, in which she explores the ways that media affect how audiences understand images, create their own works and use media to connect with others. Contact: sannett@wlu.ca

Andrea Austin, associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, is an expert in cultural theory. Her research has focused on science fiction film and literature, narrative games and adaptation, posthumanist theory and aesthetics theory, among other topics. Contact: aaustin@wlu.ca

Alexandra Boutros, associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies, is an expert on fan culture, popular culture, race and cultural production, and popular music, with a particular focus on hip-hop. Her research has focused on the intersection of media, technology and identity within religious, social and cultural movements. She has studied the Black diaspora, Haitian Vodou, Vodou in popular culture, ubiquitous computing and Afrofuturism, focusing on social networking arising out of images of Black technologized subjectivity. She has also created and taught a course on Drake. Contact: aboutros@wlu.ca

Jing Jing Chang, associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, is an expert in Chinese cinema, especially in post-war Hong Kong, and gender and sexuality in film. Her first book, Screening Communities, explores the role of film culture in building narratives of empire, nation and the Cold War in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s. She is working on her second book, The Politics of the Invisible, which explores the representation of sex and sexuality in Hong Kong cinema. Contact: jchang@wlu.ca

Russell J. A. Kilbourn is a professor and chair of the Department of English and Film Studies, specializing in film theory, memory studies, comparative literature and adaptation. Kilbourn has written several books and many other book chapters and journal articles. His books include: Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representation of Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema; The Memory Effect: The Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film; W.G. Sebald’s Postsecular Redemption: Catastrophe with Spectator; and The Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino: Commitment to Style. Kilbourn is also one of the founders of the Posthumanism Research Network and his current research interests include posthumanism, the postsecular, Italian cinema and Inuit cinema. Contact: rkilbourn@wlu.ca