Aurore Spiers - "Archiving the Past" - Allyson Nadia Field

Aurore Spiers will discuss Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927-1978 Volume 10. She will be joined in conversation by Allyson Nadia Field. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op.

RSVP Here — please note your RSVP is requested but not required.

About the book: Archiving the Past uncovers the story of the women in France who, from the 1920s to the 1970s, played critical roles in the production of global cinema's history: as archivists charged with collecting films and other materials, as witnesses tasked with remembering their own film careers, and as activists committed to recovering women's contributions to film history. Reflecting on how gender politics informs the production of film history, Aurore Spiers recasts the film archive as a site of women's intervention, modeling strategies for inclusivity, recuperation, and liberation within feminist film historiography.

About the author: Aurore Spiers is a film and media historian whose scholarship and teaching focus on women filmmakers, feminist film historiography, and the archive. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts and the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Texas A&M University. She received her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago in 2022. Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978 (University of California Press, 2026) is her first book.

About the interlocutor: Allyson Nadia Field is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film & The Possibility of Black Modernity (Duke University Press, 2015) and Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss that Changed Film History (University of California Press, 2026).