ALUMNA SPOTLIGHT: CHELSEA BIRKS, MA FILM STUDIES, UBC BA HONOURS PHILOSOPHY

Film Studies MA alumna Chelsea Birks, winner of the 2017 SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) Student Writing Award for her article, “Objectivity, Speculative Realism, and the Cinematic Apparatus,” will have the winning article published in Cinema Journal 57.4 this summer.
http://www.cmstudies.org/?page=2017_awards
Congratulations to Chelsea, as well, for recently completing her PhD in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow in Scotland!
Chelsea Birks Biography
Chelsea Birks recently completed her PhD in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her dissertation, Limit Cinema: Bataille and the Beyond-Human in Contemporary Global Film, examines the ecological implications of contemporary cinema through a film-philosophical lens. She won the 2017 SCMS (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) Student Writing Award and her article, “Objectivity, Speculative Realism, and the Cinematic Apparatus” will be published in Cinema Journal 57.4. She has also been published in New Review of Film and Television Studies and Journal of Gender Studies. Prior to studying at Glasgow, she completed her MA at UBC in Film Studies, and her BA at UBC in Honours Philosophy.
Thoughts about her time at UBC:
“My research opens new connections between philosophy and film studies, an interdisciplinary approach that was hugely influenced by my time as a student in Theatre and Film at UBC. I had vague ambitions of becoming a filmmaker when I started my undergraduate degree, but I very quickly fell in love with the theoretical side of things instead. I learned a deep appreciation of classical and contemporary philosophies from Arts One and my major in Honours Philosophy, but it was my minor in Film Studies that really sparked my imagination and inspired me to pursue graduate research. For me, cinema makes ideas come alive; it negotiates complex modes of being and perceiving, even (or perhaps especially) when it appeals to mass audiences. My master’s degree allowed me to explore these questions through classes on film theory and a directed study on film-philosophy. I had excellent mentors in the department, and my cohort and I were encouraged to participate in academic life by publishing and attending academic conferences – rare opportunities at the master’s level. It was during my MA that I developed a sense that theoretical approaches need not be at odds with real-world concerns, and that film studies can help to answer some of the most pressing concerns of contemporary culture. My current research looks at how recent films from around the world are addressing climate change and the ecological crisis; moving on from my PhD, I want to look at how B.C. filmmakers are representing environmental issues. I’m very excited to be back at UBC, where I’ve been teaching classes since January 2018!”