Ithaca College

Patricia Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies and Codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, delivered an invited lectured entitled "Towards a Theory of Open Space New Media Documentary" for the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden on February 15, 2018.

Her lecture outlined the theoretical model for collaborative, horizontally-designed, place-based new media documentary projects about conflict zones developed in her recent book with Helen De Michiel, Open Space New Media Documentary: A Toolkit for Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018).

She also served as what is called the "opponent" for a PhD dissertation defense on racialized home movies from Mississippi, delivering a written lecture on the dissertation's theories and arguments, and then engaging the candidate in questioning on theory, method, historiography, and analysis for one hour.  

Then, a panel of outside examiners who were not involved in supervising the dissertation each ask questions to the candidate. In Sweden, PhD defenses are public events.