Sasha Crawford-Holland | Vanderbilt University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sasha Crawford-Holland
Film History, 2020
This study investigates how The Birth of a Nation’s Canadian exhibition and reception shaped Cana... more This study investigates how The Birth of a Nation’s Canadian exhibition and reception shaped Canada’s racial formation during a decisive period of nation building. The notoriously racist film took Canada by storm despite national mythologies founded on principles of equality and compassion. While Black Canadians grounded their protests against the film in patriotic ideals, white Canadians brandished those ideals as evidence of the protests’ redundancy. Analyzing historical discourse in mainstream newspapers, the Black press, trade publications, and censorship documents, I investigate how seemingly benevolent, Canadian modalities of racism enabled this white-supremacist film to triumph north of the border.
Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, 2018
As if fulfilling a prophecy, virtual reality (VR) has arrived. In recent years, its most prominen... more As if fulfilling a prophecy, virtual reality (VR) has arrived. In recent years, its most prominent advocates have championed the emergent medium’s humanitarian potential, as practitioners aim to leverage VR’s verisimilitude to restore shock and immediacy to images of distant suffering. Despite this practice’s historical lineages, hysterical discourse around VR today frames it as a prophesied arrival that transcends the limits of representation. This prophetic status evokes what André Bazin called the myth of total cinema: the aspiration to a complete representation of reality that has underlain the entire history of mechanical reproduction. VR’s leading practitioners have embraced this seductive myth, celebrating the deepened empathy and understanding that allegedly ensue from VR’s immersive power. However, the destined quality of total realism circles us back to something primordial—to cinema’s infancy and the myth of credulous spectators deceived by the illusion before them. I consider how these two key film-theoretical myths collide in VR. By unraveling them alongside the interlaced discourses of immersion and empathy, this paper interrogates the politics of virtual witnessing. I argue that cinematic myths continue to enchant discussions around VR in a technologically deterministic manner that misrepresents the medium’s humanitarian potential.
Television & New Media, 2019
This paper analyzes the use of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat combat-related po... more This paper analyzes the use of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. In this therapeutic practice, patients wear a head-mounted virtual reality display and enter a simulation designed to incarnate their triggering memories. VRET visualizes the formerly invisible site of psychotherapy, achieving a medical aspiration that has been pursued since the turn of the twentieth century. This visualization subjects therapy to a mode of surveillance and mediates the conditions in which trauma is processed. In this paper, I consider how VRET’s user interfaces produce feelings of agency that reconfigure how power is distributed at the scene of therapy. I situate this novel practice at the intersection of two technological histories: the industrial history of the military-entertainment complex that spawned VRET, and the theoretical history that unites psychoanalysis and computation in their mutual ambition to formalize thought. Contending that neither of these histories can be disarticulated from the violent projects they have sustained, I interrogate the politics of a practice that visualizes and virtualizes psychotherapy to argue that VRET processes trauma according to a militarized worldview.
Reviews by Sasha Crawford-Holland
Book Chapters by Sasha Crawford-Holland
Indigenous Media Arts in Canada, 2023
Indigenous Media Arts in Canada, 2023
Film History, 2020
This study investigates how The Birth of a Nation’s Canadian exhibition and reception shaped Cana... more This study investigates how The Birth of a Nation’s Canadian exhibition and reception shaped Canada’s racial formation during a decisive period of nation building. The notoriously racist film took Canada by storm despite national mythologies founded on principles of equality and compassion. While Black Canadians grounded their protests against the film in patriotic ideals, white Canadians brandished those ideals as evidence of the protests’ redundancy. Analyzing historical discourse in mainstream newspapers, the Black press, trade publications, and censorship documents, I investigate how seemingly benevolent, Canadian modalities of racism enabled this white-supremacist film to triumph north of the border.
Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies, 2018
As if fulfilling a prophecy, virtual reality (VR) has arrived. In recent years, its most prominen... more As if fulfilling a prophecy, virtual reality (VR) has arrived. In recent years, its most prominent advocates have championed the emergent medium’s humanitarian potential, as practitioners aim to leverage VR’s verisimilitude to restore shock and immediacy to images of distant suffering. Despite this practice’s historical lineages, hysterical discourse around VR today frames it as a prophesied arrival that transcends the limits of representation. This prophetic status evokes what André Bazin called the myth of total cinema: the aspiration to a complete representation of reality that has underlain the entire history of mechanical reproduction. VR’s leading practitioners have embraced this seductive myth, celebrating the deepened empathy and understanding that allegedly ensue from VR’s immersive power. However, the destined quality of total realism circles us back to something primordial—to cinema’s infancy and the myth of credulous spectators deceived by the illusion before them. I consider how these two key film-theoretical myths collide in VR. By unraveling them alongside the interlaced discourses of immersion and empathy, this paper interrogates the politics of virtual witnessing. I argue that cinematic myths continue to enchant discussions around VR in a technologically deterministic manner that misrepresents the medium’s humanitarian potential.
Television & New Media, 2019
This paper analyzes the use of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat combat-related po... more This paper analyzes the use of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) to treat combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. In this therapeutic practice, patients wear a head-mounted virtual reality display and enter a simulation designed to incarnate their triggering memories. VRET visualizes the formerly invisible site of psychotherapy, achieving a medical aspiration that has been pursued since the turn of the twentieth century. This visualization subjects therapy to a mode of surveillance and mediates the conditions in which trauma is processed. In this paper, I consider how VRET’s user interfaces produce feelings of agency that reconfigure how power is distributed at the scene of therapy. I situate this novel practice at the intersection of two technological histories: the industrial history of the military-entertainment complex that spawned VRET, and the theoretical history that unites psychoanalysis and computation in their mutual ambition to formalize thought. Contending that neither of these histories can be disarticulated from the violent projects they have sustained, I interrogate the politics of a practice that visualizes and virtualizes psychotherapy to argue that VRET processes trauma according to a militarized worldview.