‘Big’ and ‘little’ Quo Vadis? in the United States, 1913–1916: Using GIS to map rival modes of feature cinema during the transitional era

This article emanates from a geospatial database of over 600 premieres of the Cines company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), an eight-reel film distributed by George Kleine, and nearly 250 premieres of the Quo Vadis Film Company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), a three-reel film of ambiguous origins distributed by Paul De Outo. By mapping local premieres of both films across the United States from 1913 through 1916, the data show with spatiotemporal precision the spread of Quo Vadis? as one of cinema’s early blockbuster titles. Yet within this national phenomenon, the two films’ footprints reveal differing cultural geographies served by competing efforts to feature Quo Vadis? using alternative practices of distribution and exhibition. The study finds that Quo Vadis? played a more complex role mediating the rise of features than is yet known, serving rival modes of cinema where longer, more expensive films were celebrated but also contested

‘Big’ and ‘Little’ Quo Vadis? in the United States, 1913–1916: Using GIS to Map Rival Modes of Feature Cinema During the Transitional Era

This article emanates from a geospatial database of over 600 premieres of the Cines company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), an eight-reel film distributed by George Kleine, and nearly 250 premieres of the Quo Vadis Film Company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), a three-reel film of ambiguous origins distributed by Paul De Outo. By mapping local premieres of both films across the United States from 1913 through 1916, the data show with spatiotemporal precision the spread of Quo Vadis? as one of cinema’s early blockbuster titles. Yet within this national phenomenon, the two films’ footprints reveal differing cultural geographies served by competing efforts to feature Quo Vadis? using alternative practices of distribution and exhibition. The study finds that Quo Vadis? played a more complex role mediating the rise of features than is yet known, serving rival modes of cinema where longer, more expensive films were celebrated but also contested

Mapping Flat, Deep, and Slow: On the \u27Spirit of Place\u27 in New Cinema History

This essay engages in a creative, heuristic, and reflexive consideration of the ‘localities’ of cinema audiences by exploring New Cinema History as a place. New Cinema History is conceptualised as a place continually produced in and through its interactions with the heterogeneous multiplicities of situated audiences and experiences of cinema that form the topoi of its landscape of inquiry. In reflecting on how this placialised landscape has been and might be represented, I argue that New Cinema History’s ‘spirit of place’ is most productive when rendered within a ‘splatial’ framework that draws upon practices of flat, deep, and slow mapping to offer new possibilities for bridging space and place, narrative and cartography, and history and geography. These practices motivate myriad forms of collaboration and data exchange among diverse projects and stakeholders that perforate and continually redraw boundaries of knowledge using dynamic, multiple, open tactics for representing and recombining research

Identification and Validation of Novel Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Staging Early Alzheimer's Disease

Ideally, disease modifying therapies for Alzheimer disease (AD) will be applied during the 'preclinical' stage (pathology present with cognition intact) before severe neuronal damage occurs, or upon recognizing very mild cognitive impairment. Developing and judiciously administering such therapies will require biomarker panels to identify early AD pathology, classify disease stage, monitor pathological progression, and predict cognitive decline. To discover such biomarkers, we measured AD-associated changes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) proteome.CSF samples from individuals with mild AD (Clinical Dementia Rating [CDR] 1) (n = 24) and cognitively normal controls (CDR 0) (n = 24) were subjected to two-dimensional difference-in-gel electrophoresis. Within 119 differentially-abundant gel features, mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) identified 47 proteins. For validation, eleven proteins were re-evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). Six of these assays (NrCAM, YKL-40, chromogranin A, carnosinase I, transthyretin, cystatin C) distinguished CDR 1 and CDR 0 groups and were subsequently applied (with tau, p-tau181 and Aβ42 ELISAs) to a larger independent cohort (n = 292) that included individuals with very mild dementia (CDR 0.5). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses using stepwise logistic regression yielded optimal biomarker combinations to distinguish CDR 0 from CDR>0 (tau, YKL-40, NrCAM) and CDR 1 from CDR<1 (tau, chromogranin A, carnosinase I) with areas under the curve of 0.90 (0.85-0.94 95% confidence interval [CI]) and 0.88 (0.81-0.94 CI), respectively.Four novel CSF biomarkers for AD (NrCAM, YKL-40, chromogranin A, carnosinase I) can improve the diagnostic accuracy of Aβ42 and tau. Together, these six markers describe six clinicopathological stages from cognitive normalcy to mild dementia, including stages defined by increased risk of cognitive decline. Such a panel might improve clinical trial efficiency by guiding subject enrollment and monitoring disease progression. Further studies will be required to validate this panel and evaluate its potential for distinguishing AD from other dementing conditions

Mapping Flat, Deep, and Slow: On the ‘Spirit of Place’ in New Cinema History

This essay engages in a creative, heuristic, and reflexive consideration of the ‘localities’ of cinema audiences by exploring New Cinema History as a place. New Cinema History is conceptualised as a place continually produced in and through its interactions with the heterogeneous multiplicities of situated audiences and experiences of cinema that form the topoi of its landscape of inquiry. In reflecting on how this placialised landscape has been and might be represented, I argue that New Cinema History’s ‘spirit of place’ is most productive when rendered within a ‘splatial’ framework that draws upon practices of flat, deep, and slow mapping to offer new possibilities for bridging space and place, narrative and cartography, and history and geography. These practices motivate myriad forms of collaboration and data exchange among diverse projects and stakeholders that perforate and continually redraw boundaries of knowledge using dynamic, multiple, open tactics for representing and recombining research

A cultural studies approach to the social history of film: A case study of moviegoing in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1926-1932

Historical investigation of film audiences and conditions of reception is an underdeveloped area of inquiry, limited by models of spectatorship and mass culture that construct audiences in passive and abstract terms. Current research addressing this problem remains restricted to the years prior to normalization of vertical integration during the mid 1920s, when studio control over exhibition is seen to flatten the contexts of reception and cultural differences between audiences. This dissertation picks up the history of audiences and contexts of reception where current research leaves off by analyzing moviegoing in Springfield, Massachusetts for the period 1926-1932. Starting from the material, social, and discursive contexts within which meanings for moviegoing were constituted, this dissertation locates the historical analysis of film audiences within the framework of cultural studies, which conceptualizes the audience as a nonreductive feature of cultural production. Focusing on the 1926-1932 period, the study recognizes the political economic impact studio integration had on the moviegoing experience throughout America, and assesses the degree to which moviegoing became standardized on the local level. This assessment is made by examining every theater operating in Springfield between 1926 and 1932. Correlating seat capacity with ownership patterns, the study concretely measures the changing proportion of studio dominance over local exhibition. Through an analysis of primary documents and oral histories, the study reconstructs the cultural appeals of each theater, the social geography of the neighborhoods surrounding each theater, and the discourses through which each theater\u27s audiences were constituted and the experience of moviegoing made meaningful. The results indicate significant differences in the social meanings of moviegoing as practiced at different exhibition sites, and suggest the continuing cultural and ideological significance of class and ethnic distinctions in marking out the terrain of exhibition, patterns of attendance, and modes of moviegoing during the early era of vertical integration