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Tanya Goldman

@tanyagoldman.bsky.social

6.6K followers 2.5K following 1.4K posts

www.tanyagoldmanphd.com

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · Jun 24

Professional update: This August, I will be beginning new job as Assistant Professor in Department of Communication, Media, Journalism, + Film at Missouri State University. Happy to have landed somewhere permanent with welcoming colleagues, have many to thank for their support over past decade...

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Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 4h

In my class we read about AI and creativity, and one of the big discussions has been how different people seem to be defining creativity. Every time I read something like this, it's clear we don't have a shared definition of this word. /1

But users will crave more than fan fiction, and Sora seems well placed to become TV on demand, enabling them to design original content that they want to watch and share. If history is a guide, the social media platforms that thrive are those that support and protect human creativity—in this case, the creativity to make the TV and movies you always wished existed.

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wendy copium @alicebennett.bsky.social · 20h

one thing LLMs have revealed is that the belief that there is a magical incantation that will give you what you want is not just confined to pick-up artists and freemen on the land

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 22h

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

A post from an academic on blue sky that says: "I'm learning about "prompt engineering" when asking LLMs to extract data. I now add this to all instructions:

Style
Be concise, analytic, and specific (cite page/figure if provided). If essential info is missing, keep going but flag Unclear and exact data needed. Never invent data.

#academicsky"

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 10h

Am flabbergasted every time. I shouldn’t be and yet…

Reposted by Tanya Goldman

Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social · 15h

CFP — “The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics”
Spectator Special Issue (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

Essay submissions due December 1, 2025.

See images with alt text here and in thread for CFP details. 1/

Spectator Special Issue: The Amateur Reconsidered: Media, Labor, Publics (Volume 46.2 Fall 2026)

The category of the “amateur” has long been marked by instability. Etymologically linked to love (amator), the amateur historically signified passion and connoisseurship, yet in modern usage it has oscillated between devotion and dilettantism. This semantic tension has shaped how amateur practice has been positioned within aesthetic discourse, labor history, and the formation of the public sphere.
Cinema and media studies has repeatedly returned to amateurism to both dismiss it and laud its critical and creative possibilities. Accounts of home movies and small-gauge film cultures once considered them part of the marginalia of personal or domestic life, but scholarship has since demonstrated their aesthetic, social, and historical significance. Scholarship, including Patricia Zimmermann’s foundational work, has situated amateur media within broader institutional and discursive frameworks, from the formation of aesthetic norms in clubs and contests to the intersections of labor history, expertise, and the public/private divide. Simultaneously, amateur practice has been examined as a counter-aesthetic and an alternative mode of production, as in Maya Deren’s “Amateur Versus Professional” (1959), which framed amateur film as resistant to the industrial logics of Hollywood. Yet amateurism has also been understood as politically mobilized: Soviet avant-garde circles and interwar Japanese movements such as Prokino envisioned the amateur as a figure of collectivism, workers’ culture, and social transformation. These diverse trajectories indicate that amateurism has never been a singular phenomenon, but rather a contested and heterogeneous category that both reflects and unsettles the boundaries of cultural production and consumption.

At a moment when digital platforms both amplify non-professional production and intensify regimes of credentialization, amateurism demands renewed critical scrutiny. How might the consideration of amateur practice illuminate shifting conceptions of authorship, expertise, and creativity? In what ways does amateurism negotiate or contest the professionalization of cultural life? And how might the figure of the amateur reframe our understandings of mediation, publicness, and the politics of work and play?

This special issue of Spectator seeks contributions that interrogate amateurism as a theoretical and historical category across media forms and cultural contexts. We welcome essays that draw from diverse archives and methodologies, including studies of amateur film and video, domestic and vernacular media, digital platforms, and transnational amateur practices.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Histories and theories of amateur media
Digital platforms and amateur media
Amateur media in a transnational/global context
The politics of amateurism
The aesthetics of amateur media
Leisure, hobbies, audienceship, and labor
Home movies
Fandom
Preservation and archival practices regarding amateur media
Pedagogical approaches to amateur media
Book reviews of recent scholarship examining amateur media

Deadline for Submission: December 1, 2025

Spectator is a biannual publication by the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Cinema & Media Studies.
Manuscripts to be considered for publication should be sent to:

Issue Editor: Wakae Nakane
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 W. 34th St. Suite 320
Los Angeles, CA-90089
wnakane@usc.edu

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David Sirota @davidsirota.com · 22h

This is some of the best political news I've seen in a very long time.

There's a clear a way to end the Citizens United precedent by changing state incorporation laws - and now luminaries in both parties are forcing a vote on it in the 2026 election.

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

Part of me wants to scrap everything and just show THE GREAT DICTATOR in its entirety but they already got their Chaplin fix with MODERN TIMES.

(Will squeeze in clips for sure!)

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

Anyway, great piece on from @publicdomainrev.bsky.social on LAMBETH WALK, NAZI STYLE (1942). In addition to circulation in UK, British Ministry of Information distributed to U.S. newsreels companies including Universal which is linked in article.
publicdomainreview.org/collection/l...

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

Tomorrow’s Film History to 1960 topic: “Hollywood from War to Peace” (1939-1946). CASABLANCA as feature. Immediately prior, I’m showing OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO FIRING LINE (Disney) + British Ministry of Information gem “GERMAN TROOPS DO THE LAMBETH WALK” ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_k...

Hitler Assumes Command - German Troops Do The Lambeth Walk.

YouTube video by British Movietone

www.youtube.com

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

I’m hoping you’re serious and PLEASE TELL ME YOU STILL HAVE THIS?!

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

Um, how did I forget PEDRO PASCAL?

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 17h

We need a new Nicolas Cage one for sure!

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 19h

I’ve got it! Let’s fight AI by rebooting those 1980s and ‘90s Celebrity “Read” Posters. TAYLOR SWIFT! BABY BUNNY! WHOEVER ELSE IS COOL IN 2025!
bookriot.com/celebrity-re...

Celebrity "READ" Posters Of The 80s and 90s

Those of us who work in libraries or have spent many hours in them can tell you one of the things that's present in most -- if not all -- libraries is the

bookriot.com

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 20h

I KNOW! Couldn’t even make the human effort. BYYYYEEE.

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 23h

STOP IT.

My student told me he got an apology text that was clearly written by AI!! I think he He he ended the friendship over it. A+

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 23h

I think some of my old photocopied essays work but haven’t investigated in full

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 23h

Today in my “Documentary Storytelling” class included an appropriately entertaining tech color glitch: projector (or in-room computer) flipping blues and red hues and making Morris and McNamara look like Smurfs and/or members of the Blue Man Group

Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 1d

As a person who cares about reading and human thinking, I’d like to share the simmering rage I feel knowing that opening a 4+ page essay in Adobe Acrobat automatically prompts this message: “This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant."

Text that appears when opening a PDF document in Acrobat: "This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant” appears.

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 1d

Academic friends: raise your hand if you regularly find October the most stressful month of the academic year.
(April is a close second).

(And the whole fascism thing doesn’t help..)

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 1d

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/m...

Renato Casaro, ‘Michelangelo of Movie Posters,’ Dies at 89

www.nytimes.com

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Tanya Goldman @tanyagoldman.bsky.social · 1d

One of my favorite Long Island attractions!

old roadside pics @roadside.xor.blue · 1d

long island duck, long island, new york, [between 1972 and 2008]

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Kate Fortmueller @kfortmueller.bsky.social · 19d

Brief pause from my social media hiatus for shameless self-promotion (and because I love our cover). My book w/ @mirandabanks.bsky.social is available for purchase at the UC Press website www.ucpress.edu/books/boom-t...

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Michael Socolow @michaelsocolow.bsky.social · 23d

The @mediaburn.bsky.social Archive is an extraordinary primary source resource, filled with "Lost Objects" from video history that are fascinating, funny, and thought-provoking.

If you've never kicked around it, go check it out.

The latest in the Lint Trap.

open.substack.com/pub/linttrap...

Image of a shirtless Pittsburgh Steeler football player Lynn Swann wearing a baseball cap, with the text: "Historic [Chicago] Video Digitized: The MediaBurn Archive. The Media Burn Archive, out of Chicago, has digitized and made available some very interesting (and historic) video."

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Andy Uhrich @andy-uhrich.bsky.social · 21d

The power of synchronicity when doing research. I randomly purchased the April 1952 "Popular Photography" from eBay for a project where I'm tracking the number of companies that were selling commercial films to the home market. This issue is not digitized as far as I can tell.

Page forty form the April 1952 "Popular Photography." Includes two photographs showing David Bradley filming with a Bole camera and a shot from his amateur movie "Peer Gynt." The article's title and subtitle are "An Amateur Crashes Hollywood: David Bradley started making 16-mm film stories in prep school. Now he's a full-fledged director for the world's largest studio." The article is by Will Lane. The caption next to the image from "Peer Gynt" reads "Success came to David Bradley (left) after much hard work, many setbacks - as believers in the Horatio Alger legend knew it would. Bradley, at 11, borrowed a 16mm camera, shot 100 feet of film, put on a show for neighbor kids in Winnetka, Illinois. It was a flop. But he persisted, and at 15, filmed Treasure Island; at 17, Emperor Jones and A Christmas Carol, then a full-length Oliver Twist—all with a faithful old $45 obsolescent camera. Then he bought newer equipment and produced Peer Gynt (see still above)."

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South West Silents @swsilents.bsky.social · 3d

The Freak: script of Charlie Chaplin’s unfinished final film to be published: www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

The Freak: script of Charlie Chaplin’s unfinished final film to be published

Exclusive: Fantasy about ‘a beautiful creature with wings’ has been compiled from drafts, storyboards and sketches

www.theguardian.com

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SilentFilmTitle @silentfilmtitle.bsky.social · 4d

An Even Break (1917). #SilentFilm

Intertitle from 1917 film ’An Even Break’ which reads “If you let these automatics come in, half of you will be looking for jobs”

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