CURRENTS Presents: “Fact-Checking Fiction” with Renée Pastel

The Art, Art History & Film Department welcomes Boston College Professor of Communication Renée Pastel for this CURRENTS Presents virtual talk. Pastel will focus on the relationship between memory and moving images, and how such a relationship affects narratives both on and off the screen. Through contemporary film and television clips, Pastel will discuss their varying investments in historical memory and accuracy, and the expectations of viewer knowledge in terms of second-screen viewing and the instinct to fact-check fictionalized representations based on true events.

Join the event live at https://bccte.zoom.us/j/99139976737.

Renée Pastel is an Assistant Professor in Communication at Boston College. She earned a PhD in Film & Media from University of California Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in New Media, and her research critically examines contemporary screen cultures and their relationship to present memory curation for the future. She is working on a manuscript that examines the repetition of narrative figures across “War on Terror” media, and how genre conventions shape cultural memory and mask the fracturing of national identity. Her recent essay “Hashtag Television: On-Screen Branding, Second-Screen Viewing, and Emerging Modes of Television Audience Interaction” was included in #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sex, and Nation (University of Michigan Press 2019).