Recollecting Collecting

Lucy Fischer's Recollecting Collecting is one of the first books to explore film and media collecting from a scholarly point of view. Featuring the work of scholars whose collections have inspired, tested, or extended their research, Fischer provides a rare and compelling look into film and media collecting and the ways that it has shaped professional lives.

~Patrice Petro, Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

In Recollecting Collecting, Lucy Fisher gathers an eclectic selection of scholars who cannily explore the ways affective attachment to material objects can contribute to the widening of film and media research. Engaging Black cinema collectibles, Hollywood fan magazines, TV-inspired fashion, and comic books, among other artifacts, this timely anthology urges a nuanced questioning of the roles ownership, access, and power have accrued in the writing of media historiographies. By dwelling on the intersection of fandom and scholarship, this collection of essays further prompts an important reconsidering of what emerges when a scholar falls in love with their primary sources.

~Diana W. Anselmo, Author of a Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood, and Assistant Professor of Critical Studies, California State University, Long Beach

In addition to its erudition and scholarly value, Recollecting Collecting will produce sighs of pure pleasure among readers who have always viewed their assorted and cherished treasures as a tangible means of connection with the past, real or imagined. In fact, the only thing 'wrong' with this volume is that I am not in it.

~Adrienne L. McLean,, Author of All for Beauty: Makeup and Hairdressing in Hollywood's Studio Era and Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom

This is a wonderful 'collection' of essays devoted to a subject many readers can relate to but perhaps have not quite come to terms with. For any scholar there is surely an element of autobiography in the reading of this engaging, important, and wonderfully accessible collection. Indeed, the first-person narratives are fascinating whether one knows the writers personally or not at all. One wants often to say, 'that's interesting!' or 'me, too!' and the deft integration of theoretical underpinning or scholarly revelations only makes this sharper, clearer, and more inviting. It is surprising that there has been no significant work on personal collecting by film and media scholars. Thus, Lucy Fischer, one of the true pioneers in the field, has done it again, offering up a book that, somehow, we didn't realize but now insist that we absolutely need.

~Frances Gateward, Professor of Communication, Culture, and Media Studies, Howard University

Gathering a range of first-rate scholars and inventive topics, Lucy Fischer's fascinating collection orchestrates three contemporary theoretical currents—focused on material culture, thing theory, and collecting—to make a clear case for the vibrancy of current debates in film and media criticism.

~Timothy Corrigan, Professor Emeritus of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Author of the Essay Film: from Montaigne, After Marker