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The Annual Dennis Turner Memorial Lecture
The Annual Turner Lecture and scholarship was introduced by the generous donation of the Turner family in memory of Dennis Turner, who was an Assistant Professor of Film in the Department of English from 1981 until his untimely death three years later. Dennis was born in NY in 1946 and received his BA from Columbia in 1973, and was a visiting fellow at the Sorbonne from 1977 to 1978. He received his MA from Indiana University in 1977 and his PhD in 1981. Dennis had a wide knowledge of film with special interests in French and German cinema, particularly in the work of Godard, Herzog, Fassbinder and Truffaut. He was the author of seven articles on film, and was also working on a book on New German cinema, and a screenplay at the time of his death. As a teacher Dennis inspired devotion in his students who have written of his intelligence and the warm rapport that he established with him. Each year the annual Dennis Turner Lecture is given by a prominent film scholar or practitioner, to honor the memory of this extraordinary scholar and teacher.
D. N. Rodowick
2010 Dennis Turner Lecture, October 29, 2010
 On October 29, 2010 the Dennis Turner Memorial Lecture: “A Compass in a Moving World (on genres and genealogies of theory)” was given by D. N. Rodowick.
D. N. Rodowick is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
Rodowick is the author of numerous essays as well as five books:The Virtual Life of Film (2007); Reading the Figural, or, Philosophy after the New Media (2001); Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine (1997); The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference, and Film Theory (1991); and The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory (1989). His talk will included material from his forthcoming book An Elegy for Theory.
Garrett Stewart
2009 Dennis Turner Lecture, October 30, 2009
 On October 30, 2009 the Dennis Turner Memorial Lecture: “Cinema's Digital Turn ” was given by Prof. Garrett Stewart, the James O. Freedman Professor of Letters at the University of Iowa. The lecture itself consisted of a series of clips from various films, classic and recent, accompanied by Garrett Stewart's commentary.
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Jon Lewis
2008 Dennis Turner Lecture, April 10, 2008
 On April 10, 2008 the Dennis Turner Memorial Lecture “Real Sex: The Aesthetics and Economics of Art house Porn ” was given by Dr. Jon Lewis, a Professor of Film at Oregon State University and a renowned specialist in contemporary American cinema and media studies. His talk was on non-simulated sex in art house cinema and discussed recent films like John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, Catherine Breillat’s Romance, and Vincent Gallo’s Brown Bunny. There was a large student and faculty turnout, who were intrigued by the provocative subject. The representation of sex and sexuality in cinema has been a growing field in film studies, and Dr. Lewis’ talk was an opportunity for our students to hear about this scholarship. Dr Lewis is the author of 7 books, including Whom God Wishes to Ruin…. Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood and Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. He has also appeared as an academic commentator in two recent documentaries on respectively, the sex industry, and censorship: Inside Deep Throat (Fenton Baily, 2005) and This Film is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick, 2006).
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Gaylyn Studlar
2007 Dennis Turner Lecture
 Gaylan Studlar is the Rudolf Arnheim Collegiate Professor of Film Studies at the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
"Raucous Women and Wily Children: Age and Fads of Femininity in Classical Hollywood"
Gaylyn Studlar is the author of numerous books including: Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, co-edited with Kevin J. Sandler, Rutgers University Press, (1999), Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience, co-edited with David Desser, Smithsonian Institution Press,
(1993), In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic, Columbia UP, Morningside Edition, (1992); U of Illinois Press, (1988) Her Current book project is Precocious Charms: Juvenated Femininity in Classical Hollywood Stardom (contracted with University of California Press for submission in 2007).
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Jacqueline Stewart
2006 Dennis Turner Lecture
 Associate Professor of English, Cinema & Media Studies, African & African American Studies University of Chicago. Author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, University of California Press.
The works of prolific African American filmmaker Spencer Williams have not received much critical attention, in large part because they seem to display the same “bad” stylistic qualities ascribed to early Black films in general. Looking at Williams’ religious dramas, including The Blood of Jesus (1941), this talk explores the issue of style in “race movies,” exploring the complex ways they construct spaces (e.g., urban and rural, secular and sacred) to situate their stories and their audiences on the eve of an integrationist era.
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View poster of event
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Donald Crafton
2004 Dennis Turner Lecture
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