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Brian Jacobson

@bleudeciel.bsky.social
5.4K followers 922 following 145 posts

The Cinema of Extractions (2025), Media Climates (2022), In the Studio (2020), Studios Before the System (2015) Writing about Art, Media, Energy, Environment. Next book: oil, gas, and media culture in France+empire Caltech Professor of Visual Culture

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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 48s
We are also searching for an Assistant Professor of Early Modern English Literature -- details here: applications.caltech.edu/jobs/english
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We are once again searching for a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in Visual Culture, focus on visual culture and the environment - deadline November 15 - details and application here: applications.caltech.edu/jobs/vcpd
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Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group SCMS @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We are pleased to share CFP for our annual Nontheatrical Student Essay Award. Due Feb 15 2027. Winner’s essay will appear in THE MOVING IMAGE journal. Please share widely! amianet.org/wp-content/u... @scmstudies.bsky.social @necsusjournal.bsky.social @orphanfilm.bsky.social @amianet.bsky.social
Call for Papers: Nontheatrical Student Essay Award 2027 

In collaboration with AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) and its journal, The Moving Image, the SCMS Nontheatrical Film and Media SIG is delighted to announce its fifth annual Nontheatrical Student Essay Award.  Designed to recognize outstanding graduate student scholarship founded upon archival nontheatrical research,
this award underscores both organizations’ commitment to mentorship and professional development, connecting award-recipients with mentors to guide them through the process of crafting journal-ready manuscripts. The award-winning essay will also be published (subject to revisions) in The Moving Image. 

Eligibility: Applicants must be enrolled in a recognized graduate program at the time of entry.

[Truncated for space]

Submissions will be due 15 February 2027 and can be sent to nontheatricalessayaward@gmail.com. The award winner will be contacted in March 2027, and announced at the 2027 SCMS Annual Conference.The Moving Image is the journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). It explores topics relevant to both the media archivist and the media scholar. The Moving Image deals with crucial issues
surrounding the preservation, archiving, and restoration of film, video, and digital moving images. It features detailed profiles of moving image collections; interpretive and historical essays about archival materials; articles on archival description, appraisal, and access; behind-the-scenes looks at the techniques used to preserve, restore, and digitize moving images; and theoretical articles on the future of the field.

The Nontheatrical Film & Media scholarly interest group of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) provides a setting for scholars working in this area to collaborate, share research tips, and debate methodological issues. Moreover, this SIG acts as another connection between the academic and archival worlds, and between other SIGs and committees within SCMS, such as the Media Archives Committee. The mission of the Nontheatrical Film & Media Scholarly Interest Group is to facilitate discussion, consolidation, outreach, and inclusion.
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
People often ask me what I teach Caltech students in Visual Studies/Culture. This article describes a class about groundwater loss in California’s Central Valley and how we approach that issue from a variety of angles, including images and their history, and especially going to the valley to see it
magazine.caltech.edu
Caltech Course Takes on Central Valley Water Issues — Caltech Magazine
This spring, students in the Visual Culture and the California Environment course took a field trip to immerse themselves in the landscapes they had been studying. By Katie Neith The Central Vall...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
www.fiafnet.org/fiaf-stateme...
Statement on the targeted strikes which destroyed the costume collection of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio, Ukraine.

The Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) unequivocally condemn Russia's overnight attack on 15 June on various regions of Ukraine, which damaged, among other important cultural sites, the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio in Kyiv. The studio's costume collection, one of the oldest such collections in Ukraine and home to upwards of 100,000 items, was completely destroyed in this strike, while many other film-related artefacts may have also been affected
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The new issue of Leonardo is out with the special section I co-edited with Maggie Bell about Art + Electric Light, with essays about Charcot, Piotr Kowalski, contemporary photography in South Africa, Andean textiles, and conservation practices (with work by Rauschenberg, Flavin, Chryssa).
direct.mit.edu
Volume 59 Issue 3 | Leonardo | MIT Press
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
muse.jhu.edu/article/990451 First and last pages of @marthashearer.bsky.social's really sharp and generous review of The Cinema of Extractions (@columbiaup.bsky.social) in the latest JCMS issue @jcmsjournal.bsky.social
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
And in the Canadian Journal of Film and Media Studies, a review by Rachel Webb Jekanowski utppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Eli Boonin-Vail has published a detailed and insightful review of The Cinema of Extractions (@columbiaup.bsky.social) in Early Popular Visual Culture @epvcjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
The cinema of extractions: film materials and their forms
Published in Early Popular Visual Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Next week in New York: Petroleum in (and out of) the Visual Arts sofheyman.org/events/petro...
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Philip Leventhal @philipleventhal.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Today! All old and new books in @columbiaup.bsky.social's Film & Culture series are 50% off, including NOMADIC CINEMA by Alison Griffiths; MAN OF TASTE, by Rob King; THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS by @bleudeciel.bsky.social; and DEATH BY LAUGHTER, by @hennefem.bsky.social! bit.ly/4rupQx9 #CyberMonday
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
This new book extends the project to more explicit connections between infrastructural forms and image forms, in part to ask what place visual/formal/textual analytic approaches have after the turn to what I call Raw Materialism cup.columbia.edu/book/the-cin...
cup.columbia.edu
The Cinema of Extractions | Columbia University Press
From the petroleum used to make film stock to the carbon and tungsten needed for studio lights and theater projectors, every movie relies on extractive proce... | CUP
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
This book expanded the historical and geographic scope of the infrastructure-image project with essays by 12 scholars working from early cinema to television and avant-garde new media - and infrastructure from iron/glass and rail to electrical grids and FTZs www.ucpress.edu/books/in-the...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
Two decades ago I started working on the architecture and infrastructure of moving images. Didn’t put “infrastructure” in the title so it seems to have gotten lost in the era of keyword-search scholarship, but this was the first big product of that project cup.columbia.edu/book/studios...
cup.columbia.edu
Studios Before the System | Columbia University Press
By 1915, Hollywood had become the epicenter of American filmmaking, with studio "dream factories" structuring its vast production. Filmmakers designed Hollyw... | CUP
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Twelve great essays on the infrastructure of film and media images: www.ucpress.edu/books/in-the...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Twelve great essays on the infrastructure of film and media images: www.ucpress.edu/books/in-the...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
one source is here: archive.org/details/pho1...
archive.org
Photoplay (Apr - Sep 1918) : Chicago, Photoplay Magazine Publishing Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
We are hiring in American History - TT open rank search applications.caltech.edu/jobs/history
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
revistas.uam.es/secuencias/a...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/parker_stens...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Did you ever post the enviro course list? I’d love to see that one too
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
theguardian.com
Kleptomania, family feuds and Europe’s tallest dam: the strange story of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film
In desperation at his antisocial behaviour, the mother of the French new wave pioneer sent him to work in ‘purgatory’. It was to inspire Operation Concrete, Godard’s only documentary
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
call me humanist deadweight, but if you think it is an objectively logical and effective argument to equate how the humanities and sciences have, for centuries, shared a mission within the university with the 2000 AOL/Time Warner merger, you might need remedial humanities training, not "unyoking"
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James Leo Cahill @jamesleocahill.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Discourse 46.3 is live! It features an absolutely essential piece reflecting on fascist times by Georges Didi-Huberman: "Why Obey?," skillfully translated by Heath Valentine from the short book Pour Quoi Obéir. Every piece in this issue is fantastic.
Table of contents for Discourse 46.3. Georges Didi-Huberman and Heath Valentine, "Why Obey?"; Basil Bababneh, "Negotiating Queer Arab Formalism," Jamie Chambers, "Fabulation, Magical Transformation and Montage," Christopher Peterson, "The Beekeeper's Ghost," Travis Alexander, "Those things you see through," and Matthew Hubbell, "Revolutionary Postures," plus more!
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
shout out to The Cinema of Extractions in this review of work I wish I could get to Trondheim to see www.frieze.com/article/liv-...
frieze.com
Mythologies of a Green Petrostate: Liv Bugge’s ‘Umbilical Fire’
The artist’s show at Kunsthall Trondheim probes the stories we tell ourselves about oil – and proposes new ones
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Oh yeah of course, it’s great stuff
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
they offer so many good options, it's hard to choose
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
(and the rest of the wonderful essays in that issues by Debashree Mukherjee, Weihong Bao, Katerina Korola, and Yuri Furuhata - they are all so terrific): online.ucpress.edu/representati...
online.ucpress.edu
Volume 157 Issue 1 | Representations | University of California Press
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Jennifer Fay's essay about Baichwal (et al)'s 2018 Anthropocene The Human Epoch, which I know a lot of people have problems with, but that is precisely what Fay's essay takes up: online.ucpress.edu/representati...
online.ucpress.edu
Do I Know the Anthropocene When I See It?
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018) is a film that gives rise to productive confusion about the sight and state of our planet and the inadequacy of our current concepts and aesthetic categories. The ...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
two more shoutouts: Jennifer Peterson's @jenniferpete.bsky.social essay about watching old films from the perspective of the so-called Anthropocene: online.ucpress.edu/representati...
online.ucpress.edu
An Anthropocene Viewing Condition
This essay explores what I call an Anthropocene viewing condition, a contemporary spectator position in which images of nature, particularly moving images of natures past, resonate with present and fu...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
lareviewofbooks.org/article/big-...
lareviewofbooks.org
Big Oil’s High-Risk Love Affair with Film | Los Angeles Review of Books
Big oil and Hollywood came of age together.
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Two short and (I think) very undergrad ready essays about these kinds of films: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
journals.uchicago.edu
The Shadow of Progress and the Cultural Markers of the Anthropocene | Environmental History: Vol 24, No 1
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Self interested, but this is short, aims to be easy to read, and was fun to write (I’ve heard from folks who had success teaching it last year): online.ucpress.edu/fq/article/7...
online.ucpress.edu
Evil Does Not ExistDownstream Environmental Form
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (2023) takes a formal approach to environmental criticism that this article names the “downstream.” Delivered audio-visually and thematically, Hamaguchi’s techn...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
I have had success teaching corporate oil shorts, especially BP’s Shadows of Progress. They tend to blow the students’ minds. Shell’s Climate of Concern is another good one
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Evil Does Not Exist
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Sad but true
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
Imperfect, but I would take one Jia film for every ten of the films on The NY Times’s Jia-less list
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Have we also been trained—and trained our grads—that we only have time to read books’ introductions, which are often available online? Why buy the book if you only “need” to read the first 25 pgs? We need a culture of deeper reading practices, but that seems antithetical to the academic horse race
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James Leo Cahill @jamesleocahill.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
Okay LA... @bleudeciel.bsky.social is bringing the gang back together. Join us at Cal Tech on June 5-6 if you can, I'll be speaking on the 5th about Perut and Osnovikoff's Los Reyes, how to lie (down) like a dog, and the grundwerk of the great derangement of the senses.
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
LA-area folks, please join us next week, June 5-6, at Caltech, for a meeting of the Anthropocene Media Working Group with 2 days of talks and conversation. Details and registration here: www.hss.caltech.edu/news-and-eve...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Here's the game and artist's statement: www.invisibleculturejournal.com/pub/patil-th...
invisibleculturejournal.com
The Price to Live
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
One of our terrific undergrads turned Super Mario Brothers into a critique of American healthcare and published it in @invisibleculture.bsky.social magazine.caltech.edu/post/the-pri...
magazine.caltech.edu
The Price to Live: A Video Game Takes on Healthcare — Caltech Magazine
By Cynthia Eller  In the winter of 2024, Pranav Patil (BS ’24) had an epiphany. A Caltech computer science major from San Diego, Patil was considering which classes he should take in his final ...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Coming up on May 29 at Caltech Visual Culture, I will be speaking with our current artist in residence, Jessica Segall about art, energy, and extraction www.caltech.edu/campus-life-...
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
The deadline for the special section of Leonardo about Art and Electric Light I am co-editing is coming up on June 2. Note that the submission word count is short: 2,500-5,000. Happy to answer questions. leonardo.info/opportunity/...
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Philip Leventhal @philipleventhal.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
In an excellent interview w/ @thr.com, Brian Jacobson (@bleudeciel.bsky.social) talks about Hollywood's longstanding relationship to the oil industry and his new book, THE CINEMA OF EXTRACTIONS. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus... @columbiaup.bsky.social
hollywoodreporter.com
Hollywood Has Always Gushed About Fossil Fuels
From the silent era to the oil-crazed '50s to today, the two industries have been inextricably linked, says the author of the book 'Cinema of Extractions.'
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Very excited to host @emmywaldman.bsky.social at Caltech Visual Culture next week
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
For The Hollywood Reporter's new Sustainability issue, I talked to @degenpener.bsky.social about The Cinema of Extractions @columbiaup.bsky.social @thr.com
hollywoodreporter.com
Hollywood Has Always Gushed About Fossil Fuels
From the silent era to the oil-crazed '50s to today, the two industries have been inextricably linked, says the author of the book 'Cinema of Extractions.'
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Brian Jacobson @bleudeciel.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
For The Hollywood Reporter's new Sustainability issue, I talked to @degenpener.bsky.social about The Cinema of Extractions @columbiaup.bsky.social @thr.com
hollywoodreporter.com
Hollywood Has Always Gushed About Fossil Fuels
From the silent era to the oil-crazed '50s to today, the two industries have been inextricably linked, says the author of the book 'Cinema of Extractions.'
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