Masoud Yazdani Award

The Masoud Yazdani Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Film Scholarship honors Masoud Yazdani, founder and publisher of Intellect, who died in 2014.  Masoud was a passionate champion of Film Matters and — by extension — undergraduate scholars. This book award is given annually to a Film Matters author who has published a peer-reviewed feature article during the previous volume year; feature authors are automatically considered for this award by an independent panel of judges (active instructors at higher education institutions).  The winning author receives a book from the field of film studies, in recognition of his/her achievement.

Past Masoud Yazdani Award Winners

2023

Winner: Cole Clark, “Afraid to Live, Afraid to Die: Sources of Anxiety in She Dies Tomorrow” (FM 13.2, 2022)
Book Prize: Sarah Godfrey, Masculinity in British Cinema, 1990-2010 (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Honorable Mention: Aatika Fareed, “Western Modernism and the Fetishization of the Hijab: Deconstructing the Movie Hala”(FM13.1, 2022)
Book Prize: Paolo Cherchi Usai, Spencer Christiano, Catherine A. Surowiec, and Timothy J. Wagner, eds., The Art of Film Projection: A Beginner’s Guide (George Eastman Museum, 2019)
Judges: Lexi Collinsworth (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Hannah Davenport (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Dason Fuller (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Clayton Sapp (University of North Carolina Wilmington)

2022

Winner: Maria Mutka, “‘To Begin on Again’: A Study of Early Cinema’s Unique Influence on Modernist Literature” (FM 12.1, 2021)
Book Prize: Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic, eds., The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film (Ohio State UP, 2015)
Honorable Mentions: Emma Cieslik, “Monster and the Mob: A Critical Analysis of Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)” (FM 12.2, 2021) & Devon Kurtz, “One of the Boys: The Smug, Patriarchal Undertones of Anders als die Andern (1919)”(FM12.2, 2021)
Book Prize: Paolo Cherchi Usai, Spencer Christiano, Catherine A. Surowiec, and Timothy J. Wagner, eds., The Art of Film Projection: A Beginner’s Guide (George Eastman Museum, 2019)
Judges: Hugh Feldmann (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Connor Holland (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Matthew Smits (University of North Carolina Wilmington)

2021

Winner: Lydia Spencer-Elliott, “Choreography to Choreocinema: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Surrealism and Dance” (FM 11.1, 2020)
Book Prize: Matt Zoller Seitz, The Wes Anderson Collection (Abrams, 2013)
Honorable Mentions: Sarah Kazuko Chow, “Anna May Wong: Navigating Asian American Racial Identity in Early Hollywood” (FM 11.1, 2020) & Ben Werdegar, “Forgotten Narrative of Palestine” (FM 11.2, 2020)
Book Prize: Paolo Cherchi Usai, Spencer Christiano, Catherine A. Surowiec, and Timothy J. Wagner, eds., The Art of Film Projection: A Beginner’s Guide (George Eastman Museum, 2019)
Judges: Eleanor Gratz (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Stephen Lambros (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Saifey Maynor (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Rachel Pittman (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Kate Wise (University of British Columbia)

2020

Winner: Alexandra Coburn, “Valerie the Vampire Slayer: Abjection, the Czech New Wave, and Feminist Interventions” (FM 10.3, 2019)
Book Prize: Sue Thornham, ed., Feminist Film Theory: A Reader (NYU Press, 1999)
Honorable Mentions: Safwat Nazzal, “Off-Script: Toward a Revolutionary Arab Cinema” (FM 10.1, 2019) & Justine Xi, “Critical Anti-Realism in Chinese Postsocialist Films Chicken Poets (Meng Jinghui, 2002) and Asia One (Cao Fei, 2018)” (FM 10.3, 2019)
Book Prize: Paolo Cherchi Usai, Spencer Christiano, Catherine A. Surowiec, and Timothy J. Wagner, eds., The Art of Film Projection: A Beginner’s Guide (George Eastman Museum, 2019)
Judges: Alexis Dickerson (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Anya Ekaterina (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Matthew Johnson (Victoria University of Wellington), Genie Mason (University of North Carolina Wilmington), Matthias Smith (University of North Carolina Wilmington)

2019

Winner: Katelyn Terry, “Contorted Bodies: Women’s Representation in Japanese Horror Films” (FM 9.2, 2018)
Book Prize: David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (sixth edition, Knopf, 2014)
Judges: Michael Benton (Bluegrass Community & Technical College), Charlie Michael (Emory University), Alison Taylor (Bond University), Tom Ue (Dalhousie University)

2018

Winner: Nicole Veneto, “‘That lightsaber. It belongs to me.’: Patriarchal Anxiety and the Fragility of White Men’s Masculinity in The Force Awakens” (FM 8.3, 2017)
Book Prize: Paul Duncan, The Star Wars Archives: 1977–1983 (Taschen, 2018)
Honorable Mention: Julia Glick, “Today I’m Going to Test You: Oppositional Cyborgs and Automated Anxiety in Ex Machina” (FM 8.3, 2017)
Book Prize: Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016)
Judges: Michael Benton (Bluegrass Community & Technical College), Ari Laskin (Occidental College), Elizabeth Ward (University of Hull)

2017

Winner: Ouma Amadou, “Constructing (Black) Girlhood: Americanization, Assimilation, and Ambivalence” (FM 7.3, 2016)
Book Prize: John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, eds., The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Judges: Kelli Fuery (Chapman University), Travis Merchant (Wake Tech Community College), David Resha (Oxford College of Emory University)

2016

Winner: Nace Zavrl, “Spectatorship and Synchronous Sound Before the Transition: A Contextual Analysis of Chronophone, Phonofilm, and Movietone Shorts” (FM 6.3, 2015)
Book Prize: Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Harvard University Press, 1994)
Judges: Frederic Leveziel (University of South Florida St. Petersburg), Tom Ue (University of Toronto), Johnny Walker (Northumbria University)

2015

Winner: Christina Newland, “Archetypes of the Southern Gothic: The Night of the Hunter and Killer Joe” (FM 5.1, 2014)
Book Prize: Valeria Belletti, Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (University of California Press, 2006)
Judges: Michael Benton (Bluegrass Community & Technical College), Stephen Charbonneau (Florida Atlantic University), Scott Wilson (Unitec Institute of Technology)