Audiovisual scholarship and experiments in non-linear film history

In this essay, we want to consider how videographic forms provide an opportunity for inventive ways of making arguments, presenting evidence, and conveying analysis. While the audiovisual essay is increasingly legitimated within academia, there are still interesting questions to ask about its status as scholarship. Can the audiovisual essay do the same “work” as the written scholarly essay? Do audiovisual forms have any advantages in conveying an argument? Do they have particular limitations? Through a discussion of two of our own works, we suggest that indeed, the audiovisual essay offers a unique potential to convey the goals of scholarship through subjective, poetic, performative and filmic means. More precisely, as this essay will explore, videographic methods have the potential to enable novel approaches to film history