Film and Digital Media PhD Candidate Marc Francis has received the Annette Kuhn Essay Award from SCREEN for his essay “The Asexual-Single and the Collective: Remaking Queer Bonds in (A)Sexual, Bill Cunningham New York, and Year of the Dog.” Camera Obscura 31, no. 1 91 (2016), written during his time in the PhD program.
SCREEN is the UK’s preeminent film journal and one of the most important journals in English internationally. The award was announced at the Screen conference at the University of Glasgow at the end of June.
The Annette Kuhn Essay Award was established in 2014, in recognition of Professor Kuhn’s outstanding contribution to Screen and her wider commitment to the development of screen studies and screen theory. The award offers £1,000 to the author/s of the best debut article in film and television studies, as judged by the Screen editors and members of the journal’s editorial advisory board.
Of the essay specifically, the panel said: "This essay explores genuinely new territory. In the process, it interrogates even the most progressive existing paradigms of discourse on sexuality. The three films it treats are aptly chosen and the theoretical and critical landscape it traverses is fascinating and new. In eloquent and accessible prose, Francis makes an important and inspiring case for the potential of representations of asexuality and singlehood to disturb the larger legitimating sexual and romantic order of things, giving rise (perhaps paradoxically) to create new possibilities for collectivity. The essay resonates with one of Screen’s strongest traditions, challenging normative representations of sex and gender and theorizing progressive alternatives."
Congratulations to Marc on this outstanding achievement!