Jacqueline Stewart

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Jacqueline Stewart
Born1970 (age 53–54)[1]
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • film historian
  • museum director
  • television host
  • university professor
Education
Years active1999–present

Jacqueline Najuma Stewart[2] is an American author, university professor, and television host for Turner Classic Movies. In 2022, she was appointed as director and president for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.[3] She has served as University of Chicago professor of cinema studies[4] and director of the nonprofit arts organization, Black Cinema House.[5]

Biography[edit]

Early years[edit]

Stewart was born and raised in Hyde Park, within South Side, Chicago.[6] During her childhood, she remembered her aunt Constance introducing her to classic films on television. She stated, "...I always stayed up really late with her watching black and white films. She would talk to me during the commercial breaks about all the stars and the theaters that she used to go to. I was fascinated by the alternative world that I saw, the way that people talked and the way they dressed."[7]

She graduated from Kenwood Academy High School. Afterwards, she enrolled into Stanford University, intent on becoming a journalist. There, she watched Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It (1986). Impressed, she studied Lee's career and feminist film theory, in which she based her B. A. thesis on.[8] In 1991, she graduated with a Bachelors in English. In 1993, she graduated with a Master's degree, and in 1998, with a PhD both in English from the University of Chicago (UC).[9][10]

Career[edit]

She taught at the University of Chicago from 1999 to 2006, serving in the Department of English and on the Committee on Cinema & Media Studies.[1] In 2006, she joined the Departments of Radio/Television/Film and African American Studies at Northwestern University as an associate professor. She returned to the University of Chicago in 2013 as a professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies.[11] During the fall of 2020, she began an extended leave from the University of Chicago after she was selected as artistic director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.[12]

Author[edit]

In 2005, Stewart published her first book titled Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. The Chicago Tribune reported she had spent a decade researching the topic, which focused on the role Hollywood cinema played in both influencing and reflecting the social mobility of Black Americans, particularly during the Great Migration when they began relocating to the Northeast after living in the South.[1]

Ten years later, in 2015, she co-authored the book L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (2015), chronicling the film movement, with then-UCLA Film and Television Archive director Jan-Christopher Horak and then-UCLA cinema studies professor Allyson Nadia Field.[13] In 2021, she published her third book William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission, a biography of the documentary filmmaker, with Scott MacDonald, a professor at Hamilton College.[14]

Museum curator[edit]

In 2005, she founded the South Side Home Movie Project, which collects, preserves, as a cultural and historical resource, the 16 mm, 8 mm, and Super 8 homemade films of residents of South Side, Chicago, together with oral histories of the creators. The archive is headquartered in Evanston, Illinois, but after Stewart left for Northwestern University, she continued to collaborate with the university's Film Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, and several Chicago graduate students to continue the project.[15][16] In 2016, Stewart collaborated with Charles Musser on curating the DVD set Pioneers of African-American Cinema.[17]

By 2020, she was a third-term appointee to the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), which advises the Librarian of Congress on policy. She also chairs the NFPB Diversity Task Force, ensuring the selected films chosen for the National Film Registry reflect diversity and inclusion.[18][19]

In 2018, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[20] In 2021, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellows Program.[11] Taking a sabbatical from the University of Chicago, in 2021, Stewart was appointed as the inaugural artistic director at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.[12][21] On July 6, 2022, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced Stewart's appointment as director and president of the institution.[3][22]

Television career[edit]

In September 2019, Stewart became the first African-American host for Turner Classic Movies, as the host for the Silent Sunday Nights programming block.[18] In 2020, she stated her first exposure to silent films was watching them at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, with her friends during weekends.[23]

In June 2020, following the murder death of George Floyd, writer–director John Ridley wrote an op-ed calling for the 1939 film Gone with the Wind to be pulled from HBO Max.[24] The film was temporarily pulled and placed back on the service later that month, with a new commentary introduction from Stewart.[25] In an op-ed for CNN, Stewart wrote: "Some complained that taking the film down was a form of censorship. For others, seeing Gone with the Wind featured so prominently in HBO Max's launch felt like salt rubbed into wounds that have never been permitted to heal ... But it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for Black lives that Gone with the Wind should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion."[26]

In 2021, TCM debuted a new series titled Reframed Classics, reanalyzing 18 films with problematic racial and gender stereotypes, with Stewart as one of the co-hosts.[27]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Jones, Patrice M. (July 28, 2005). "Movies as Mirrors". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, pp. 1, 7. Archived from the original on May 14, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024. A 35-year-old academic, Stewart was courted by many of the nation's top universities.
  2. ^ Phillips, Michael (September 2, 2016). "Jacqueline Stewart, champion for African-American cinema". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on November 24, 2019. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  3. ^ a b "The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Appoints Jacqueline Stewart as New Director and President". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Press release). Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. July 6, 2022. Archived from the original on July 12, 2022. Retrieved July 11, 2022. The Board of Trustees of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced the appointment of Jacqueline Stewart as the director and president of the institution. Stewart has served as chief artistic and programming officer of the Academy Museum since 2020.
  4. ^ "Jacqueline Stewart—Department of Cinema and Media Studies". University of Chicago. Archived from the original on April 24, 2020. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  5. ^ "Afronauts with Frances Bodomo and Jacqueline Stewart" (Press release). Graham Foundation. Archived from the original on December 11, 2019. Retrieved November 1, 2017. Jacqueline Stewart is ... co-curator of the L.A. Rebellion project at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Her film work in Chicago includes founding the South Side Home Movie Project and serving as Curator of Black Cinema House, a neighborhood-based film exhibition venue run by Theaster Gates' Rebuild Foundation.
  6. ^ Grifiths, John (2020). "Class Acts". Emmy Magazine. No. 3. Archived from the original on April 24, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  7. ^ Maine, Brooke (October 17, 2022). "Jacqueline Stewart Wants to Show You Another Side of Hollywood". W (Interview). Archived from the original on October 17, 2022. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  8. ^ Alexander, Sonya (June 10, 2021). "From Hyde Park to Hollywood". South Side Weekly. Archived from the original on June 10, 2021. Retrieved September 30, 2021.
  9. ^ "Jacqueline Stewart". University of Chicago (Press release). n.d. Archived from the original on May 2, 2020. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  10. ^ Fluker, Dominque (March 17, 2024). "Jacqueline Stewart, Director And President Of The Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures, Leads With Purpose". Essence. Archived from the original on March 19, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  11. ^ a b "Jacqueline Stewart". MacArthur Foundation. Archived from the original on September 28, 2021. Retrieved September 29, 2021.
  12. ^ a b Phillips, Michael (October 19, 2020). "Chicago's Jacqueline Stewart to head LA's Academy Museum of Motion Pictures". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on May 15, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  13. ^ "'L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema". University of California Press. 2015. Archived from the original on April 2, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  14. ^ "William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission". Columbia University Press. 2020. Archived from the original on June 1, 2023. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  15. ^ "About South Side Home Movie Project". South Side Home Movie Project. Archived from the original on May 17, 2022. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  16. ^ Gibson, Lydialyle (March–April 2007). "Cinéma vérité". University of Chicago Magazine. Vol. 99, no. 4. Archived from the original on March 16, 2024. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  17. ^ Jevens, Darel (January 8, 2017). "Top Chicago Critics Circle awards go to 'Moonlight,' 'La La Land'". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on June 15, 2020. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  18. ^ a b Daniels, Karu F. (September 13, 2019). "Author, professor and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart becomes first African-American host of Turner Classic Movies". Daily News. Archived from the original on October 2, 2019. Retrieved September 16, 2019.
  19. ^ King, Loren (March 24, 2020). "Silent Sunday Nights Host Jacqueline Stewart's Easy Going Film Expertise". Motion Picture Association. Archived from the original on April 24, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  20. ^ "Jacqueline Stewart". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on November 30, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2021.
  21. ^ Thompson, Anne (October 20, 2020). "The Academy Museum Lucks Out with Chief Artistic Programmer Jacqueline Stewart". IndieWire. Archived from the original on October 23, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2021.
  22. ^ Jacobs, Julia (July 6, 2022). "The Academy Museum Names Jacqueline Stewart as New Leader". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  23. ^ Ford, Anne (January 8, 2020). "Jacqueline Stewart Watches Movies Over Your Shoulder on Airplanes". Chicago (Interview). Archived from the original on January 8, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  24. ^ Pallotta, Frank (June 10, 2020). "'Gone with the Wind' pulled from HBO Max until it can return with 'historical context'". CNN. Archived from the original on June 10, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  25. ^ Spangler, Todd (June 24, 2020). "HBO Max Restores 'Gone With the Wind' With Disclaimer Saying Film 'Denies the Horrors of Slavery'". Variety. Archived from the original on June 25, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  26. ^ Stewart, Jacqueline (June 12, 2020). "Why we can't turn away from 'Gone with the Wind'". CNN. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
  27. ^ "In a new series, TCM takes a look at 'problematic' classics". Los Angeles Times. March 4, 2021. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021. Retrieved May 14, 2024.

External links[edit]

Further reading[edit]

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