Jennifer L Jenkins

Interests

Research

Southwest (US) Studies; Indigenous Moving Image Sovereignty; Borderlands Film Culture; Visual and Literary Cultures of the Americas.

Teaching

Visual and Literary Cultures of the US Southwest and Mexico, Introduction to Archives, Archival Film Practice, Media Archaeology, Film History and Theory, Mexican Cinema, Literatures and Film

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Jenkins, J. L. (2016). Celluloid Pueblo: Western Ways Film Service and the Invention of the Postwar Southwest. University of Arizona Press.

Chapters

• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). "Revolutionary Influences on Genre Cinema in Mexico". In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford University Press.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). Rural and Small Libraries: the Tribal Experience. In Rural and Small Public Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities. Ed., Brian Real.. Advances in Librarianship. Emerald Insight Publishing.
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  This discussion will have the feel of a round-table discussion, with participants responding to a series of questions about the unique experience of tribal libraries. Participants represent rural and urban tribal libraries, as well as a rural college library on the largest Native reservation in the U.S. and six cultural traditions and language groups.In a series of questions drawn from the book’s topical headings, participants will respond to issues facing small and rural libraries within Native communities. I’ll coordinate it all and supply a short lit review. In the spirit of tribal communities, the participants will speak in their own words and the narrative will weave itself from their contributions. The “conversation” won’t be live, but when the responses are all placed together it will feel tribal and communal in design.Discussants: Stephen Curley, Archivist, Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Tribal Historic Preservation Department, Mashpee, MACordelia Hooee, Knowledge River Scholar Cohort 13, University of Arizona School of Information, Zuni Pueblo, NMDr. Herman Peterson, College Librarian, Kinyaa’áanii Charlie Benally Library, Diné College, Tsaile, AZKari Quiballo, Old Pascua Library and Yaqui Cultural Center, Tucson, AZRhiannon Sorrell, Kinyaa’áanii Charlie Benally Library, Diné College, Tsaile, AZ
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). Success and the Single Girl: Urban Romance and the Working Woman Film. In Emerging American Film Genres in the Cold War Era. University of Edinburgh Press.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). “Exhibiting America: Moving Image Archives and Small Libraries.”. In Rural and Small Public Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities. Ed., Brian Real.. Emerald-Insight Advances in Librarianship Series.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018). The Spectacle of Monte Cristo. In French Literature on Screen. Edited by R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey.(pp [27pp]). Manchester University Press.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018). "Success and the Single Girl: Urban Romance and the Working Woman". In Emerging Cold War Genres(p. 27). Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh UP.
• Jenkins, J. L., & Sturman, J. L. (2018). Sounding Modern Identity in Mexican Film. In Cultural Nationalism and Ethnic Popular Music: Indigenous Opera, Dance Dramas, Popular Songs, and Movie Soundtracks, ed. William Beezley(pp 227-253.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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  Here we examine films that represent three periods of Mexican history and identity: the post-revolutionary 1930s; the post-World War II época de oro; and the post-NAFTA millennial period. We do not contend that these films are exclusive representations of the cinema of their respective eras; indeed, they are not. However, these films provide notable representations of Mexican national identity in both sight and sound. Their particular combinations of visual narrative and musical score offer insight into the formation over time of Mexican national identity to “cinematically enfranchised citizens” of Mexico.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). Archiving the Ephemeral Experience. In Recent Advances in Archival Knowledge, eds. Karen F. Gracy and Leisa Gibbons. Rowman & Littlefield.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018). "Exhibiting America: Moving Image Archives and Rural or Small Libraries". In Rural and Small Public Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Brian Real(pp 181-202). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018). "Rural and Small Libraries: The Tribal Experience". In Rural and Small Public Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Brian Real(pp 203-). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). The Philosophy of Marriage in North by Northwest. In Hitchcock's Moral Gaze, eds., R. Barton Palmer, Homer B. Pettey, Steven Sanders(pp 253-269). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
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  Conformist domesticity of midcentury middle America, stridently promoted in women’s magazines, radio soap operas, and television, is wholly absent from the world of Hitchcock's North by Northwest. It is replaced by a stylish world of sophistication, Cold War tensions, and independent moral agents. There is little place for cosy homemaker-breadwinner couples in the film’s main locations: the U.N., mansions on Long Island and Mount Rushmore, posh hotels in New York and Chicago, the elegant Twentieth Century Limited, and the high-end Michigan Avenue auction house. Even the hospital and National Park Service cafeteria in Rapid City, South Dakota seem inhospitable to couples. The female patient through—and from—whose room Thornhill escapes the hospital could well be one of Bertrand Russell’s dreaming spinsters. The families at Mount Rushmore are mere wallpaper to the complicated gendered showdown meant to separate Thornhill and Kendall, Kendall and Vandamm, and Vandamm (James Mason) and Leonard (Martin Landau). Couples therapy can only occur at the point of a gun, as in the cafeteria, the house atop Mount Rushmore, or on the face of the monument itself.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017). ‘Wonderful and Incomparable Beauty’: Adapting Period Aesthetic for The Importance of Being Earnest. In Screening Modern Irish Fiction and Drama [Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture](pp 103-120). Palgrave-Macmillan.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014). A Symphony of Horror: the Sublime Synaesthesia of Sweeney Todd. In The Philosophy of Tim Burton. Ed., Jennifer McMahon(pp 171-192). Lexington, KY: University Presses of Kentucky.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014). A Symphony of Horror: the Sublime Synaesthesia of Sweeney Todd. In The Philosophy of Tim Burton(pp 171-192). Lexington: University Presses of Kentucky.

Journals/Publications

• Jenkins, J. L. (2016). Cut and Paste: Repurposing Texts From Commonplace Books to Facebook. Journal of Popular Culture, 48(6), 1374-1390.
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  During the European Renaissance, men (and some women) of means compiled cabinets of curiosity: actual cabinets or even whole rooms that contained objects and artworks that reflected the owner’s taste and modernity. These cabinets contained preserved biological and geological specimens, curiosities (“curios”) from the New World, African and Asia, and small artworks (Zytaruk). The cabinet was a mark of the owner-compiler’s worldliness and wealth, and indicated that this person knew enough about the world to select fine elements of it for private display. Cabinets were often organized by Aristotelian taxonomical categories such as Sea, Air, Earth, Flora, Fauna, Time, and so forth. Indeed, wealthy cabinet-owners could afford to hire someone to find and arrange items in their cabinets: an archivist/curator, although not by that name. The textual version of the cabinet of curiosities was the commonplace book, a blank book into which a reader would copy favorite passages of literature for remembrance and commentary. The taxonomic impulse is the same: gaining intellectual and authority control over vast bodies of knowledge by collection, description and organization. The commonplace book was certainly more accessible to merchant-class people than was collecting material objects from around the world. With the rise of literacy and the proliferation of printed matter in the 18th century, commonplace books became more, well, common. Such books are highly personal examples of selection and repurposing of printed texts to construct a new collection that reflects an examined or constructed mental life. This essay surveys the scholarship on several American commonplace books and scrapbooks as self-made anthologies of pre-printed texts to provide context for analysis of an unpublished archival example of self-construction in an author scrapbook and of tattooing and social media as an emergent forms of commonplacing in the 21st century.
• Feeney, M. E., Elliott, C. M., & Jenkins, J. L. (2015). Up from the Depths: Return of the 16mm Film, or How to Weed Your Film Collection.. Collection Management, 40(2), 1–16..
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  Moving images are essential to the teaching and research engagement on campus. Libraries provide access to media in many formats such as U-matic, 16mm film, VHS, DVD, and streaming video. Changing moving image technologies and preferences by faculty and students presents challenges for the librarian in managing media collections, as libraries must make difficult decisions about weeding legacy moving image collections. The authors offer a case study and practical advice on developing guidelines for collaborative, thoughtful withdrawal of 16mm films, lessons learned, and scaleable recommendations for how libraries and archives can best preserve media collections unique to their campus.
• Feeney, M. E., Feeney, M. E., Elliott, C. M., Elliott, C. M., Jenkins, J. L., & Jenkins, J. L. (2015). Up from the Depths: Return of the 16mm Film, or How to Weed Your Film Collection. Collection Management.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014). Framing Race in the Arizona Borderlands: Western Ways “Apache Scouts” and “Sells Rodeo” Films. The Moving Image, 14(2).
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  In 1940, the Tucson-based Western Ways Features Service filmed “Last of the Indian Scouts,” a short feature about Apache Scouts at the Buffalo Soldier Army post at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. This depiction of a multicultural borderlands post includes surprising performances of indigeneity that were part of the Scouts’ regular duties. A second Western Ways film captures Native veterans at the 1945 Papago Rodeo in Sells, Arizona. The two films serve as bookends to Native Arizonans’ involvement in World War II, and depict notably different aspects of Native representation in the pre- and post-war eras, separated as they are by five years in time, 130 miles of Arizona terrain, and distinct cultural differences between their subjects. The Apache Scouts film is anchored in at least a century’s worth of inherited tropes of Indian performance, displayed with some irony to the camera; the Papago Rodeo film reveals a postwar world in which horsemanship and military service are foregrounded and ethnicity is present but normative in the visual narrative.

Presentations

• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, February). Historiography of Cinema in Mexico, 1896-1930 (6 hours). Research Seminar [part of visiting research chair "Cátedra Primo Feliciano Velázquez". San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, January-December). Permanent Seminar: Patrimonio Efímero Compartido: Memorias, Experiencias, Cultura Popular y Vida Cotidiana [Comparative Ephemeral Heritage: Memory, Experience, Popular Culture, and Daily Life]. Seminario Permanente [Working Group]. San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis.
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  Group of 14 scholars, museum professionals, and doctoral students and postdocs from El Colegio de San Luis, Museo Francisco Cossío, and Universidad Autonomia San Luis Potosí.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, June). “Teatros de conversión: un mapeo preliminar del espacio de cine en San Luis Potosí,”. Segundo Simposio Internacional Patrimonio Cultural Compartido. San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis/UA College of SBS.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, March). “Straight Out of Compton: Avalon Daggett’s Postwar Educational Film Career,”. Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Seattle, WA: Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, May). Metodologías de análisis del filme como fuente histórica: Técnica Decoupage (6 hours). Research seminar as visiting chair [part of Cátedra Primo Feliciano Velázquez]. San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2019, September). Arcaeologia de Media (6 hours). Research seminar [part of visiting research chair "Cátedra Primo Feliciano Velázquez"]. San Luis Potosi, Mexico: El Colegio de San Luis.
• Jenkins, J. L., Dollman, M. S., Sorrell, R., & Fatzinger, A. S. (2019, October). Tribesourcing Vintage Educational Films: Repurposing With Native Narrations. Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums. Penchanga Indian Community, CA: Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums.
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  Panel presentation by Tribesourcing team on NEH-funded project to decolonize and repatriate midcentury educational films
• Jenkins, J. L., Dollman, M. S., Sorrell, R., & Littleben, C. (2019, November). Tribesourcing Midcentury Educational Films: Digital Repatriation and Local Knowledge. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Baltimore, MD: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
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  Panel presentation by Tribesourcing team on NEH-funded project to decolonize and repatriate midcentury educational films
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018, January). “Cruzando la frontera en 1939: Western Ways Film Service.”. Documento del Siglo XX en Archives del Siglo XXI: Promoviendo lo Efímero como Patrimonio Cultural.. Colegio de San Luis, San Luis Potosí, Mexico: Seminario Permanente: Taller Sobre Patrimonio Fílmico y Gráfico..
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018, November). Plenary Session: Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Ethical Stewardship. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Portland, OR: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
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  Moderator of plenary session: While Indigenous and tribal communities around the world are taking steps to reaffirm control over images and sounds of their communities, many materials remain in archives, museums, and libraries outside of tribal communities. Because of issues of colonialism, cultural appropriation and variability in knowledge systems (and ways of knowing), stewardship of these materials can be complex, with unique cultural, political, and spiritual sensitivities. How can audiovisual archivists working with materials from first peoples ensure a deeper understanding of the needs of indigenous knowledge keepers and archival materials to ensure ethical stewardship? What is the role of audiovisual archivists in the landscape of collaboration with indigenous communities to ensure that reaffirm their authority and control cultural heritage, and – though there is not one solution – what kinds of partnerships and collaborations can be further fostered or supported to ensure ethical stewardship and sustainability of indigenous archives?Speakers: Jen Hart, Medweganoonind Library, Red Lake Nation College and Michael Pahn, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resource Center
• Jenkins, J. L. (2018, November). “The Mine With the Iron Door: Tracing the Landscape from Text to Screen,”. American Literature Association Symposium. Santa Fe, NM: American Literature Association.
• Jenkins, J. L., & Fatzinger, A. S. (2018, February). “Tucson Tinseltown: Hollywood in the Old Pueblo.”. In Conjunction with "Desert Hollywood: Celebrity Landscapes in Cinema" Exhibit. Tucson Desert Art Museum.
• Jenkins, J. L., & Fatzinger, A. S. (2018, October). "Tribesourcing Midcentury Southwestern US Educational Films. Participation, Equity, and Inclusion: L2DL Digital Literacies Symposium. Online: Center for Educational Resources i Culture, Langugage, and Literacy (CERCLL).
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017, February). Mediated Fidelity: Steinbeck's The Pearl, Mexicanidad, and Cross-Cultural Adaptation. Southwest Popular and American Culture Association. Albuquerque, NM: Southwest Popular and American Culture Association.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017, January). "Visions of the Borderlands: Exploring Popular Historical Imagery". Opening event for " Visions of the Borderlands: Myths and Realities" exhibit at UA Special Collections. UA Libraries Special Collections: UA Libraries, UA Press.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017, July). Re-Framing the Native Image: Tribesourcing Midcentury Educational Films. Archival Educators Research Institute. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Archival Educators Research Institute.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2017, Spring). Representations of the US-Mexico Border. Visions of the Borderlands: Exploring Popular Historical Imagery. UA Libraries Special Collections: UA Libraries, UA Press.
• Jenkins, J. L., & Fatzinger, A. S. (2017, October). Tribesourcing New Narratives: Decolonizing Mid-Century Educational Media. Association of Tribal Libraries, Museums, and Archives. Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico: Association of Tribal Libraries, Museums, and Archives (ATALM).
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, Fall). Celluloid Pueblo: Wesern Ways Film and the Invention of the Postwar Southwest. "Show and Tell @ Playground". Tucson, Arizona, USA: UA Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, July). Archiving the Ephemeral Experience. Archival Educators Research Institute (AERI). Kent State University, Kent OH, USA: AERI.
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  Accepted for presentation at week-long Research Institute for archives professionals and educators.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, November). “Back from the Brink: Keeping, Using, and Valuing the Arizona 16mm Collection”. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, November). “Crossing the Border in 1939: Western Ways on the Kino Trail”. Convergences: Borders and Frontiers [English Department In-House Lecture Series]. UA Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ USA: Department of English.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, November). “Reclaiming Indigenous Sacred Moving Images in Public Collections” . Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference. Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2016, October). Tribesourcing 20th Century Film Narratives. Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) international conference. Gila River Indian Community: Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM).
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  The American Indian Film Gallery is a collection of over 450 films by and about Native peoples made between 1940 and 2010. This talk will cover issues in making these films widely accessible, including culturally-sensitive moving image archiving, labeling, and use guidelines; the importance of using Traditional Knowledge Systems in concert with archival best practices; the crucial need to incorporate tribal information on the films in finding aids and taxonomies; the need for Native language presence in the archive as a whole.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2015, July-Aug). American Indian Film Gallery: the Moving Image, Tribesourcing, and the Archive. Library History Seminar XIII: Libraries: Traditions and Innovations. Simmons College, Boston: Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.
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  The project of positioning the American Indian Film Gallery as an interactive, multimedia, multiethnic, and polyvocal resource raises both workaday and theoretical issues, such as: culturally sensitive moving image archiving, labeling, and use guidelines; the importance of using Traditional Knowledge Systems in concert with archival best practices; the crucial need to incorporate tribal information on the films in finding aids and taxonomies; the need for native language presence in the archive as a whole. Informed practice is essential. By employing “tribesourcing,” we invite elders to view and respond to the films in indigenous or/and European languages. These mp3 audio files offer counternarratives to AIFG users as they view the films. This aspect of the project allows for identification of people, places, practices, and vocabulary that might otherwise be lost, as well as providing a significantly richer, community-based metadata record for each film, thereby taking a small step toward cultural repatriation.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2015, June). "Powers of Ten" as a Case Study in Mechanical Projection. AMIA@ALA Preconference Workshop. San Francisco, CA: American Library Association.
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  A discussion and demonstration of Charles and Ray Eames' 16mm film, "Powers of Ten," as a case study of the viability of mechanical projection within academic and general audience settings.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2015, November). The Phenomenology of Mechanical Projection. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Portland, OR: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
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  Keeping it Real: Providing Access to Physical CollectionsAs the physical technology of film and analog a/v materials becomes increasingly unfamiliar to new generations of users, archivists are responding with increasingly innovative methods of making sure that physical collections remain useful and accessible. In this session, archivists working with physical film and video collections will report on their experiments with turning libraries into spaces for interacting with film, bringing archival materials into the classroom, using open-source applications and improved workflows for discovery of analog video, and encouraging the remix, reuse, and re-imagining of physical media.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2015, September). Rethinking Mexican Cinema History: Studiography as Methodology. UNAM@UA: Popular Culture and Arts of Mexico. UA Special Collecitons: The National Autonomous University of Mexico and The University of Arizona.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014, December). The Afterlife of Film: Rereading, Repatriation, and Tribesourcing the American Indian Film Gallery. Captured Shadows: the Circulation of Native American Images. Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian.
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  The American Indian Film Gallery offers a work-in-progress of moving image archiving within a multiethnic and multicultural context. This collection of over 450 films about and by Native peoples of the Americas includes educational, industrial, sponsored, and tribal films, with a large portion of the collection dating to the so-called golden age of 16mm filmmaking in 1940s-60s. As historical documents, this film collection also presents a dynamic record of the filmmaking process as it changed, around 1970, from being about Native peoples to being by Native peoples. The project of positioning the American Indian Film Gallery as an interactive, multimedia, multiethnic, and polyvocal resource through tribesourcing allows for identification of people, places, practices, and vocabulary that might otherwise be lost, as well as providing a significantly rich, community-based metadata record for each film, thereby taking a small step toward cultural repatriation.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014, October). Deaccession and Deployment at a University Library: the Arizona 16mm Collection. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Savannah, GA: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
• Jenkins, J. L. (2014, October). Using Films: Reviving 16mm in the 21st Century Classroom. Association of Moving Image Archivists. Savannah, GA: Association of Moving Image Archivists.
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  Using Films: Reviving 16mm in the 21st Century ClassroomThis panel will examine ongoing efforts to re-introduce 16mm film into K-12, college, and community classrooms as both a preservation and an education initiative. Typical 16mm content is often not available in other formats, and the continued usefulness and adaptability of the gauge and medium in educational efforts underscores its viability. Collection assessment efforts at colleges and universities in the U.S. have yielded local treasures, as well as presumed-lost born-16 films. Learning environments dedicated to film study can benefit enormously from this resource, as can public/social history, history of science, art and advertising, communications, and foreign language, and countless other disciplinary areas. The challenges of and strategies for maintaining active 16mm collections will frame this conversation. Panelists will present case studies from their own collections and discuss collaboration, coalition-building and advocacy among 16mm collections nationally. Audience members will be encouraged to contribute to a culminating discussion of the status, successes and obstacles in keeping film in the learning environment.The goal of this panel is to bring together successful users of 16mm in educational contexts, and to demonstrate ways in which collections managers and film faculty can revive this format in 21st century classrooms. This session will engage the tension between conservation for longevity and archiving for access to original formats right now. It will also:• raise awareness of the inherent value of the original format• argue for access to that format• propose the new model for success which partners librarians and educators with archivists Panelists:Johanna Bauman, Visual Resources Curator at Pratt InstituteRoger Leatherwood Brown, Manager of Instructional Media Collections and Services at UCLACarolyn Faber, Media Collections Manager at the School of the Art Institute in ChicagoAntonella Bonfanti, Collection Manager, Canyon Cinema Rachael Stoeltje, Director, Film Archives at Indiana UniversityDwight Cody, The Boston Connection, Film Equipment Supplier dedicated to servicing classroom projectors
• Feeney, M. E., Feeney, M. E., Elliott, C. M., Elliott, C. M., Jenkins, J. L., & Jenkins, J. L. (2013, November). Up From the Depths: Return of the 16mm Collection. Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Annual Conference. Richmond, VA.

Reviews

• Jenkins, J. L. (2017. Review of WESTERNS: A WOMEN'S HISTORY by Victoria Lamont (U Nebraska P, 2016).(pp 105-106.).
• Jenkins, J. L. (2013. The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film by Janna Jones (review)(pp 230-233).

Others

• Jenkins, J. L. (2017, August). "Revolutionary Influences on Genre Cinema in Mexico". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. http://latinamericanhistory.oxfordre.com/browse?t0=ORE_LAH:REFLAH004