Scott Mackenzie

Professor, Department of Film and Media, Queen’s University

After completing my PhD in Communications at McGill University, I went to Scotland to undertake a post-doctoral fellowship on minor national cinemas at the University of Glasgow. Before coming to Queen’s, I taught at universities in the UK and Canada. My most recent research addresses global Arctic moving images cultures. My published books and articles reflect these interests.

I have recently co-edited three books on Critical Arctic Studies. The first, Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (co-edited with Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Edinburgh University Press, 2015), is the first book to address the vast diversity of Arctic cinemas from a transnational perspective. With chapters on polar explorer films, silent cinema, documentaries, ethnographic and Indigenous film, gender and ecology, as well as Hollywood and the USSR’s uses and abuses of the Arctic, this book provides the first account of Arctic cinemas from 1898 to the present.

The second volume, part of the Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History series, entitled Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (co-edited with Lill-Ann Körber and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), offers a diverse and groundbreaking account of the intersections between modernities and environments in the circumpolar global North, foregrounding the Arctic as a critical space of modernity, where the past, present, and future of the planet’s environmental and political systems are projected and imagined. Investigating the Arctic region as a privileged site of modernity, this book articulates the globally significant, but often overlooked, junctures between environmentalism and sustainability, Indigenous epistemologies and scientific rhetoric, and decolonization strategies and governmentality.

The third volume, Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (co-edited with Lilya Kaganovsky and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Indiana University Press, 2019), examines the global history in Arctic documentary moving images.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (co-editor, w/ Lilya Kaganovsky and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Indiana University Press, 2019).

Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (co-editor, w/ Lill-Ann Körber and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (co-editor, w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Edinburgh University Press, 2015).

Chapters in Books:

 “Arctic Expressionism and the Poetic Documentary: The Northern Films of Arne Sucksdorff” in Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport, eds. Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (Indiana University Press, 2019): 92-113.

“The Polarities and Hybridities of Arctic Cinemas” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), in Janine Marchessault and Will Straw, eds. The Oxford Handbook to Canadian Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2019): 125-146.

“Tearing up the Screen: Pia Arke’s Post-Colonial Processes” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), in Scott MacKenzie and Janine Marchessault, eds., Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019): 390-406.

 “北极情节剧: 跨过北方的边境和女性的自我重新定位” (‘The Melodramatic Arctic: Northern Border Crossings and Women’s Self-Repositioning’, w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport) in Chuanfa Wan, ed. 媒体生态研究项目语境下的性别化表演研究新论 (Beijing: China Film Press, 2018): 58-65.

 “Introduction: Arctic Modernities, Environmental Politics, and the Era of the Anthropocene” (w/ Lill-Ann Körber and Anna Westerstahl Stenport), in Lill-Ann Körber, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerståhl Stenport, eds. Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017): 1-20.

“Introduction: What Are Arctic Cinemas?” (with Anna Westerstahl Stenport) in Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport, eds. Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (Edinburgh University Press, 2015): 1-28.

“The Creative Treatment of Indigeneity: Nanook as the North” in Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport, eds. Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (Edinburgh University Press, 2014): 201-214.

Articles:

“An Alternative History of the Arctic: The Origins of Ethnographic Filmmaking, The Fifth Thule Expedition, and Indigenous Cinema” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Visual Anthropology Review 36.1 (forthcoming, 2020).

“Visualizing Climate Change in The Arctic And Beyond: Participatory Media and The United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP), and Interactive Indigenous Arctic Media” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Journal of Environmental Media 1.1 (2019): 79-99.

“Sumé, Grønland og den sosialhistoriske rockumentaren” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Z filmtidsskrift 138 (2017): 28-39.

“Action, Avatar, Ecology, and Empire: Databases, Digitality, Death, and Gaming in Werner Herzog’s Arctic” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Garrett Traylor), The Moving Image 16.2 (2017): 45-71.

“Contemporary Experimental Feminist Sámi Documentary: The First Person Politics of Liselotte Wajstedt and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6.2 (2016): 169-182.

“Arnait Video Productions: Inuit Women’s Collective Filmmaking, Coalitional Politics, and a Globalized Arctic” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 93 (31.3) (2016): 153-163.

“All That’s Frozen Melts into Air: Arctic Cinemas at the End of the World” (w/ Anna Westerstahl Stenport), Public: Art/Culture/Ideas 48 (2013): 81-91.