Paul Fileri Professorial Lecturer Literature
- Degrees
- Ph.D., Cinema Studies, New York University
M.A., Cinema Studies, New York University
B.A., English & Comparative Literature with a concentration in French Language & Literature, Columbia University - Languages Spoken
- French
- Bio
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Paul Fileri (he/him/his) is Professorial Lecturer in the Cinema Studies program in the Department of Literature at American University, in Washington, DC. He received his doctorate in Cinema Studies from New York University in 2016 and his B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He has taught courses at New York University and came to American University in 2017 to teach Critical Approach to Cinema (LIT-146), an introduction to the study of cinema and media. He now regularly teaches the AU Core course Literature, Film, and Globalization (LIT-250), courses on French Cinemas since 1945 and on international documentary, and the course Documentary: Art and Reality as a first-year seminar in the Complex Problems program. He is currently at work on a book manuscript entitled “Unsettling Subjects: Documentary and Decolonization in the French Colonial Empire.” His work focuses on documentary and nonfiction screen media, especially the place of audiovisual media in the critical historiography of race, nation, diaspora, and colonial empire. His work begins with documentary media forms and discourse, opening out onto questions across disciplines about power, difference, and the materiality of media forms. His writing has appeared in such journals as Film Quarterly, Film Comment, and Senses of Cinema.
Further research and teaching interests include media, migration and citizenship; media and collectivity in transnational social movements; French and francophone cinema and politics; contemporary and historical francophone African and Black diasporic cinemas; experimental artistic practices in sound and moving image media; the essay film; documentary and nonfiction in emerging digital media projects (online, interactive, database, site-specific installations); the history of filmmaking within state institutions and bureaucratic governance; and the history of moving image archiving and preservation. He has also taught courses on the history of world cinema and history of American cinema (Hollywood and independent) and on activist, radical, and reformist traditions in political cinema (fiction and nonfiction).
Recent publications:
Fileri, Paul. "The Work of Displacement in Colonial Documentary: History, Movement and Collectivity between the Postwar Metropole and Colonial French West Africa," in A Companion to Documentary Film History, ed. Joshua Malitsky (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2021), 27-46.
Book reviews forthcoming in The French Review.
Translation with Adrian Martin of Raymond Bellour, "Going to the Cinema with Félix Guattari and Daniel Stern," in The Guattari Effect, eds. Éric Alliez and Andrew Goffey (New York: Continuum, 2011), 220-234. Translation of "Le Dépli des émotions," Trafic 43 (Autumn 2002): 93-128.
Translation of André Bazin, "Every Film Is a Social Documentary," Film Comment, November/December 2008, 40-41. Translation of "Tout film est un documentaire social," Les Lettres françaises, no. 166, July 5, 1947.
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Teaching
Spring 2024
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LIT-146 Critical Appr to Cinema
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LIT-146 Critical Appr to Cinema
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LIT-250 Lit, Film & Globalization
Fall 2024
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LIT-146 Critical Appr to Cinema
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LIT-346 Topics in Film: Documentary Film and Media
Partnerships & Affiliations
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Selected Publications
Paul Fileri. "The Work of Displacement in Colonial Documentary: History, Movement and Collectivity between the Postwar Metropole and Colonial French West Africa," in A Companion to Documentary Film History, ed. Joshua Malitsky (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2021), 27-46. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119116172.ch2