Prof.Kass Banning

Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto

Associate Professor Kass Banning’s research focuses on aesthetics and screen alterity, to include minor cinemas and new media, ranging from diasporic to Indigenous to queer. Complementing her research on cultural translation and local / global intersections, her work revisits national, transnational and planetary analytics, from theoretical and philosophical perspectives that privilege mobility and affect. A specialist in Canadian cinema since the 1990s, she has published in the areas of minor Canadian and Black British cinemas, migratory aesthetics, and hybrid documentary media, has co-edited an anthology on Canadian women’s cinema (University of Toronto Press), and co-founded and co-edited two path-breaking Canadian quarterlies CineAction and Borderlines for over a decade.

Banning’s current research interests include moving image installation and migratory aesthetics, British artist/filmmaker John Akomfrah; CBC director / producer Mario Prizek; and she has longstanding, ongoing engagements with Inuit media and the work of artist Isaac Julien. In association with the Jackman Humanities institute, she is co-lead of the Image/Movement/Sound quadrant of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded project Aesthetic Education: A South-North Dialogue. She currently serves on the executive of the Film Studies Association of Canada.

At the undergraduate level Banning teaches courses on race (to include critical race, diaspora and postcolonial theory), transnationalism, documentary media, contemporary film and media theory, local film cultures, minor Canadian cinema and visual culture, and moving images in the gallery, in addition to courses that critically explore national/regional cinemas, such as British and Sub-Saharan African. At the graduate level, courses include: “Expanding Black Visuality,” “Installation of the Real” and “Theories and Practices.”