Tagged: The Cinematologists

Long Live Cinematologists!

Around 2003, I bought the domain name cinematologists.com for the Cinema Studies student association at NYU. I chose the domain name because film scholars used to call themselves “cinematologists,” in part to grant a pseudo-science legitimacy to the field. By the 1990s, when I started studying film, the name had long gone out of favor.

I used the domain name to stage a few websites for the annual student conference and a few symposia, such as Michael Bowen’s Confessions of a Vice Baron. The department renewed the registration over the years, but the newer crop of students who succeeded me preferred to use web 2.0 platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, and even Tumblr. They never seemed to stick to one platform, and a few years ago, the registration for cinematologists.com expired.

I considered renewing it for myself to eventually use it for something film-studies related down the line, but I found that I am too late. A bunch of English scholars have launched their own Cinematologists podcast and host the companion website at http://www.cinematologists.com.

At an hour and a half in length, the episodes run a bit long for my taste, but the episodes are great at making an academic discussion accessible for an aspiring cinematologist.