Michael Cowan has a background in Modern Languages with degrees in German, French and Cultural Studies, and has taught at universities in Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. His research in film and media has won awards from the leading Film Studies associations in North America and Europe.
His work encompasses film, visual culture and media history, with a focus on early German cinema (particularly Weimar), but encompassing other European cinemas as well. In both his teaching and research, he is interested in examining the role that visual media have played within changing understandings of the self, of knowledge and of culture in modernity. His approach is highly interdisciplinary, and he is particularly drawn to border objects that challenge us to rethink sedimented categories (methodological, intellectual and disciplinary). His work on advertising film, for example, examined the crucial role that advertising played both in modernist/avant-garde film culture (in experimental film, animation, montage, and mobile screen technologies) and, more broadly, in transforming modernity’s understanding of what it meant to interact with images.
Michael Cowan serves as the head of department of Film Studies at University of St Andrews currently.
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