Jared Gardner Serial Pleasures

Jared Gardner, associate professor of English and film at Ohio State, and author of Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature (1998), presents this year’s annual Film Studies Lecture.

Drawing on his current research, Gardner talks about the evolution of visual storytelling in American popular film, arguing that silent and early sound-period serials explored an alternative model of story construction. Ohio State’s Program in Film Studies, founded in 2005, draws together the teaching and research expertise of recognized scholars from almost a dozen university departments, offering students the opportunity to think historically and critically about the entire culture of global cinema.

image credit
from Hazards of Helen episode 26 “the Wild Engine”
(Kalem, 1915).