Assistant Professor of English
PhD Duke University
Film and media studies, critical theory, cultural studies
Research/Writing interests
Jason Middleton's research interests currently include the completion of his manuscript, titled Awkward Moments: Comedy, Documentary, Affect. The project examines American documentary films and reality-based media of the past thirty years linked by modes of awkwardness: moments of misapprehension, misaligned expectations, and failed encounters among filmmakers, subjects, and viewers. Awkward Moments offers an original theoretical framework for analyzing the ethical and political implications of awkward comedy in the representation of reality. Middleton has published essays on American horror film and "monad" video in the geopolitical context of the "war on terror," gender and television spectatorship, race in music video, and other subjects in film, media, and cultural studies. His co-edited collection from Duke University Press, Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (2007), opens up new avenues of inquiry within the field of music video studies. It explores the transformations in music video as cultural form in relation to new technologies, modes of distribution, and the global production and consumption of music video. He is also an award-winning experimental filmmaker, whose work has screened at a variety of festivals and other venues in the U.S. and internationally, as well as on public and satellite television.
Recent publications
- Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, ed. Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton, Duke 2007
- "Reaction Videos and the 'Reactive Gaze,'" forthcoming in Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31.4
- "Spectacles of Atrocity: Mondo Video in the 'War on Terror,'" Afterimage 39.1-2 (August 2011)
- "The Subject of Torture: Regarding the Pain of Americans in Hostel," Cinema Journal 49.4 (summer 2010)
- "The Audio-Vision of Found Footage Film and Video," in Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones, ed. Roger Beebe and Jason Middleton, Duke 2007
- "Buffy as Femme Fatale: The Cult Heroine and the Male Spectator," in Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ed. Lisa Parks and Elana Levine, Duke 2007
- "Documentary Comedy," in Visible Evidence: New Documentary Forms, ed. Jane Roscoe and Derek Paget, spec. issue of Media International Australia incorporating
Culture and Policy 104 (2002)
- "DC Punk and the Production of Authenticity," in Rock over the Edge: Transformations in Popular Music Culture, ed. Roger Beebe, Denise Fulbrook, and Ben Saunders, Duke 2002
- "The Racial Politics of Hybridity and Neo-Eclecticism in Contemporary Popular Music," with Roger Beebe, in Popular Music 21.2 (2002)
Teaching
Courses in film studies; documentary film and video; gender and sexuality; film genres; theory and practice of experimental film and video
Recent undergraduate courses
- Documentary and Mock Documentary (spring 2013)
- Gender and Sexuality in American Cinema (fall 2012)
- Introduction to the Art of Film (fall 2012)
- Introductory Video and Sound (spring 2010)
- Popular Film Genres: Comedy and Horror (spring 2008)
Recent graduate courses
- Modern Film Theory (spring 2013)
- Theorizing Documentary (spring 2012)
- What Is Genre? (fall 2008)
