How Teaching Film Inspired a UChicago Scholar to Bridge Media and Legal Studies
From George Floyd to Laquan McDonald, video evidence has galvanized public reaction in recent cases of police violence. For University of Chicago scholar Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, representations of police have also become an important subject of interdisciplinary study. As part of her new book project, she will explore how the disciplinarity-specific resources of cinema and media studies can also inform case law.
As a cinema and media scholar, Skvirsky thinks a lot about the evidentiary status of lens-based photographic recordings and the nature of point of view in the moving-image media. She hopes to bring some of the considerable theoretical insights that have been developed in cinema and media studies on the topic of point of view to legal discourses on body and dashboard cameras, as well as on citizen sousveillant filming practices.
“My hope is to develop scholarship that can serve as a bridge between cinema and media studies and legal studies,” she said.