Emily Anderson: How did you first hear about Film Matters and how did you decide to get involved?
Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park: I learned about Film Matters in a serendipitous manner. On his own initiative, Javi Altor Zubizarreta – one of my top students at the University of Notre Dame – submitted his revised freshman seminar research paper to Film Matters. When Film Matters accepted his submission for publication, he shared this good news with me. Upon receiving my complimentary copy of 1.2, I realized what a marvelous endeavor Film Matters is, and decided to enhance my pedagogy so that my top students would all benefit by also having a chance to get published in Film Matters. After Javi’s success with “Action Stars Who Don’t Get Any Action: Hong Kong Actors in U.S. Roles,” I have had a steady string of my students from the University of Notre Dame publish in this journal. This list includes Eleanor Huntington (1.4), Kathleen Bracke (3.1), Eric Hinrichsen (3.2), Grayson Nowak (4.1), and Rona Vaselaar (4.2).
At the University of Hong Kong, where I have been since January 2013, I continue to see my students get published in Film Matters. Jee Hee Lim (5.2) and Alexander Espeland (5.2) launched this new tradition from my first cohort of students at the University of Hong Kong. Along with these two students, I have one student whose submission passed the first of two review stages. Viveca Tallgren just received the good news that her work will appear in 5.3. Additionally, another group of students is currently revising their papers over the summer months in preparation to submit their works for publication consideration. I’ve been fortunate to become the faculty mentor with the most prolific track record at Film Matters. The total to date is nine.
Liza Palmer, co-editor in chief of Film Matters, invited me to serve on the journal’s Advisory Board starting with 2.2 after Eleanor Huntington’s publication and in recognition of my work organizing the Undergraduate Film Conference at the University of Notre Dame, which I directed for three consecutive years. She recognized early on that I am a good advocate for undergraduate film scholars as an active, involved, and engaged member of the faculty. The nine students who have published in Film Matters to date are living testaments that her hunch remains correct.
This past semester, I circulated complimentary copies of Film Matters to my film studies colleagues in Hong Kong and Macau, inviting them to encourage their best undergraduates to forward their research papers for publication consideration. This is my effort to internationalize Film Matters by bringing Asia into the mix.
EA: How do you mentor your students?
AHJMP: I chose to become a university professor to foster intellectual growth and cultural enhancement. I have a very international educational background and my pedagogical philosophy draws upon this personal treasure trove. The best way for students to understand the world around them is by sharing their insights and observations in open and sustained dialogues with their peers and the world at large. In doing so, their arguments encourage even the most skeptical of listeners to reevaluate their uncritical acceptance of long-held beliefs. Learning requires one to venture beyond orthodoxy into the realm of heterodoxy and in rare cases, even entertain heresy. If we don’t do this, then we would still operate within a geocentric universe and Galileo would not be celebrated for his scientific genius. Our horizon of understanding cannot condone barriers to limit its expansion. At the university, we should all be champions of freethinking. To meet this objective, I decided long ago when I was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa to abandon the exam format and shift my assessment strategy to focus on critical thinking and library research skills. So my courses revolve around two research papers running anywhere from 5 to 15 pages, depending on the level of the course. By teaching rhetoric for two years at the University of Iowa, I realized that the most powerful academic writings were all acts of intellectual persuasion that could change the mind frame of even the most hostile audience.
All too often, the K-12 experience is out of tune with the ambitions of undergraduate education. A lack of rigor, emphasis on rote memorization, grading based on self-esteem management, absence of research libraries, a hostile rejection of intellectual pursuits, a helicopter parenting praxis that nullifies the nurturing of agency in their own children, and the enforcement of conformity mean that most undergraduates require some guidance as they transition to an educational paradigm shift where new skills, mindset, and culture need to be mastered. Strategic risk-taking is what I am about. Mistakes, false starts, tangents, and dead ends are part of this process. Without encountering them head-on and discovering innovative tactics to overcome them, deep learning and personal self-discovery will never happen.
In each of my classes, from the freshman seminar to the senior capstone, the objective remains the same: learn from the world but transform it in the process by advancing a thesis-driven argument fortified by scholarly rigor that is creative, conceptual, and innovative, so that it can change our encounter with the world. Since I am trained as a film scholar, the cinema is the primary medium I depend on to achieve this end, but it is not the only valid approach. I ask my students to shift from knowing what others already know to doing something new with what they now know. The students who succeed in this endeavor are then encouraged to submit their work to Film Matters. So far, those who followed my encouragement have seen their work accepted for publication.
As a film scholar, I insist on the aesthetic encounter with the cinema. In keeping with the French tradition, since I too am French among many other things, I agree that the cinema is the seventh art. The most powerful film scholarship occurs when the scholar has a deep aesthetic connection with the film. You know when this happens because the insights that are shared in the scholarship take on an unexpected dimension. There is a wow effect when you come across this kind of scholarship. Overreliance on a particular theory or methodology cannot replace this necessary magical ingredient. A film will “speak” to you. It does happen. It will happen. It happens unexpectedly. You cannot predict when it will happen. But when it does, it is real and you cannot forget about it. This is what occurs in an authentic film course taught by a properly trained film scholar. When this happens, you become self-motivated to share this experience because you want others to share this experience with you. You automatically know what new knowledge you need to access from the library and as you move from the first draft to the final draft, you know yourself when you can stop. But because this personal experience is so moving, you cannot convince yourself 100% that your argument will be accepted as valid. All nine of my students who have published in Film Matters have undertaken this journey to the finish line. They all had heart, conviction, and drive. These are personal attributes that no professor can teach since it comes from within the individual. You cannot take short cuts if you want to be honest with your aesthetic experience. Without this, the argument is shallow, flat, and disengaged. It is predictable and therefore dismissible, an incomplete use of one’s time and energy.
Sharing my student publications in my courses, as an integrated component of the syllabus, changes the classroom dynamics. My students are invigorated and motivated since they see my pedagogy as a refreshing and inspiring change from what they experienced before. All of a sudden, their self-motivating drive is not about getting an “A” in my course, but rather it becomes one of sharing their research with the world at large as empowered public intellectuals.
EA: What does your students getting published in Film Matters mean to you?
AHJMP: I view all of my students as potential scholars; my courses provide the training ground for them to reach their full intellectual potential. Getting published in Film Matters is their moment of self-actualization. It becomes a public fact that cannot be denied or contested. Through this process, I have the opportunity to create a solid bond with the next generation of film scholars, and to have the satisfaction to see my students become empowered to consider pursuing an advanced degree in the field of their choice. The pleasant added benefit is to secure for myself a positive feedback loop independent of student evaluations.
EA: How does your students getting published in Film Matters help your department?
AHJMP: At the University of Hong Kong, students and faculty recognize the importance and significance of my pedagogical approach. Alexander Espeland decided to pursue his MPhil under my supervision at our university based on his experience in my class and the acceptance of his revised paper for publication in Film Matters. A published paper in Film Matters becomes an automatic ticket to getting short-listed in any prestigious international graduate program in the humanities involving the cinema. At the end of spring 2014, I was asked to become my department’s Research Postgraduate Coordinator, a position synonymous with that of Director of Graduate Studies in American academia. In this new role, I use the student publications in Film Matters as examples of the higher goals of university-level teaching. I challenge our research postgraduates (graduate students in American academic lingo) to develop their own strategies to transform the classroom experience into a eureka-generating workshop for the advancement of student research and publication.
Advising students to submit their work for publication in Film Matters convinces them of the validity of their intellectual ambitions to pursue an advanced degree. While many undergraduates can earn their bachelor’s degree, only a select few get their original works published. That joy of the first peer-reviewed academic publication is very gratifying. Many of my published students have said that they didn’t know that they were so smart. I want to make sure that as many of my students can share in this personal triumph as possible. This is what motivates me to arrive on campus every day with a big smile on my face since each new student has the potential to become a published scholar, and through this process transform the world we thought we once knew. I love these serendipitous moments and I am thankful to Javi for setting this in motion for me as well as for the students who came after him.
EA: If you were not in academics and education, where do you see yourself?
AHJMP: There are, of course, many other career possibilities. Film related, my experience organizing big budget film festivals, academic conferences, three student documentary film projects, and one promotional film that the American Pavilion granted me – and my team of eight students – as a special project to promote its student internship programs at the Cannes International Film Festival provide me with the right set of skills to become a commercial film producer. Kang Je Gyu, South Korea’s first Hollywood-styled blockbuster film director, made this observation of me after he experienced a week-long tour involving three cities and four universities. We started from the University of Notre Dame, then on to the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Stanford University and finally to San Francisco State University. I was lucky in making this happen for Director Kang and three other VIPs due to my collaboration with Dr. Chul Heo from San Francisco State University and Professor David Desser from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. The academic skills that I mastered to become a successful professor at the university also have parallel applicability in film production, an area that I did not have an opportunity to pursue as an undergraduate. It all comes down to seeing an opportunity, persuading others of the merits of your cause, and securing the right people and material to ensure a positive outcome.
Author Biography
Emily Anderson is a junior in the Film Studies department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In her free time, she enjoys being outdoors with her husband George, cuddling her cat Riley, and pursuing her photography hobby. Emily is also expecting their firstborn baby in August.
