Second-year Masters in Film Studies candidate Morgan Harper has received a $17,500 SSHRC grant to be used over 12 months. Morgan’s thesis will look at the role of sweat as an affective marker in the construction of cinematic bodies. This project will begin by theorizing how sweat’s presence on particular bodies has had racial and gendered implications throughout cinema’s history. Next, he will explore the ideological erasure of sweat on specific bodies to consider how audiences are meant to understand subjects when their affective markers are absent.
Morgan Harper
Bio: Morgan is entering his second year of UBC’s Masters program in Film Studies. Previously, he completed a Bachelors degree in Film Studies at UBC. Throughout the previous year, he has worked as a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Christine Evans’ Introduction to Film Studies and Dr. Stefania Burks’ Introduction to Japanese Cinema. Morgan has also spent the previous 18 months working as a Research Assistant for Dr. Lisa Coulthard’s SSHRC-funded project regarding the relationship between sound and violence. This research position will continue throughout the upcoming year and take him to Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library next month for archival work. After serving on its editorial board during the previous year, Morgan will begin this fall as co-Editor in Chief of UBC’s graduate journal, Cinephile. This May, he presented a paper on adaptation theory and Fargo at the Film Studies Association of Canada’s annual conference. Amongst Morgan’s primary scholarly interests are affect theory, cinematic renderings of community, film philosophy, and ecocriticism. Away from his studies, Morgan is a resident at Green College, a graduate residential college. Over the past year there, he has served as the chair of Green College’s on-site library and acted in a reimagining of Elizabeth Robbins’ 1907 suffragette play, Votes for Women!
