In Memoriam: Anne Friedberg, 57

October 12, 2009 1:37 PM

Anne Friedberg, historian, theorist of modern media culture and USC School of Cinematic Arts professor, whose work pioneered the field of visual studies, died on Oct. 9, following a long struggle with colorectal cancer. She was 57.

Friedberg’s work integrated film studies, art history, architecture and media studies into what is now a wider and richer discussion about visual culture.

“Anne was one of those rare individuals, who with her remarkable intellect, could integrate past, present and future,” said dean Elizabeth M. Daley. “She was always challenging her colleagues and students to move forward and embrace change and innovation with courage and integrity. Both her colleagues and her students were inspired by her intellectual curiosity and her rigorous scholarship.

“It is hard to comprehend the depth of her loss both to USC and the field at large,” Daley continued. “There will be many days when we turn to one another and ask ‘what would Anne say?’ The silence will be hard to bear, but we will struggle to answer the question and keep her insights alive here in the school.”

At the time of her death, Friedberg was professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, with joint appointments in English and art history. Having joined the school in 2003, she was appointed chair of the critical studies program in 2006. She was a principal architect of the new interdivisional Ph.D. program for iMAP (media arts and practice) and was on the steering committee of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate Program.

Friedberg is perhaps best known for her book Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (1993, University of California Press), and, more recently, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, published by MIT Press.

She launched The Virtual Window Interactive, a translation/extension of the book created in collaboration with designer Erik Loyer. She was also the co-editor of Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism, an anthology of critical and theoretical writing.

Named as a 2008 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, her next planned project was a work of digital scholarship on Slavko Vorkapich, a special effects cinematographer, montage expert and former dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Friedberg consistently worked to expand narrow disciplinary boundaries, an effort carried on by a legion of former graduate students.

Sheila Murphy, now assistant professor in the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures at the University of Michigan, said, “She was a generous and dedicated mentor. Her work inspired a new generation of interdisciplinary, theoretically inflected film and media scholars.”

USC assistant professor Steven Anderson, who worked closely with Friedberg in creating the iMAP program and collaborated with her on The Virtual Window Interactive project, said: “Anne helped select and mentor two cohorts of iMAP students, but more importantly, she served as the program’s intellectual center of gravity, challenging students and faculty alike to pursue the highest levels of scholarly rigor, even as we seek new modes of creative expression.

“We have missed her guidance for the past year and will continue to feel her absence profoundly and in ways that are impossible to articulate in the years ahead.”

USC professor Vanessa Schwartz, who specializes in modern visual culture, spoke about her shared interests with Friedberg. “By working at the edges of both theory and history, she masterfully wove together media histories around such major rubrics as the mobile spectator, the frame and materiality to establish conceptual categories that transcended the study of any individual media form such as film.”

Said Patrice Petro, president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Milwaukee: “Anne Friedberg shaped the course of our discipline over nearly four decades.”

Friedberg was president-elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies prior to her illness last October.

Her work reached beyond the borders of academia to influence a wide range of artists and practitioners.

Magician and writer Ricky Jay said: “Anne Friedberg combined the work of an interdisciplinary scholar with the eye of an artist. Not only did see she with originality and insight, but almost more importantly compelled us to see our own material in fresh and unconventional ways.”

Friedberg lectured widely in this country and abroad and her work was translated into German, French, Polish, Hungarian and Japanese. She also established the doctoral program in visual studies at the University of California at Irvine.

She earned her Ph.D. in film studies from New York University and did her undergraduate work at Beloit College.

Friedberg is survived by her husband, screenwriter and USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Howard A. Rodman, and their son, Tristan Rodman.

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