Colin Williamson
Biography
I grew up in California and worked briefly in postproduction and archiving before pursuing graduate school in cinema studies. I have been teaching film history and theory since 2014 and regularly offer classes on animation, science fiction, and nontheatrical film. I am also interested in questions about pedagogical innovation in cinema studies. As an extension of my teaching and research, I have served on the Executive Committee of Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, and am currently Associate Editor at Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Education
BA, Film Studies, The University of California, Santa Barbara (2006)
PhD, Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago (2013)
Statement
Colin Williamson is a historian of animation, special effects, and nontheatrical film who specializes in early cinema’s place in international histories of art, science, and technology. His interests are wide-ranging and include everything from the history of film theory and representations of the landscape in American cinema to media archaeology and experimental uses of film and media archives. Colin is the author of Hidden in Plain Sight: An Archaeology of Magic and the Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2015), which charts the history of special effects films as forms of popular science education; and a new book, Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (under contract at University of Minnesota Press), which examines the overlooked impacts that the natural sciences and discourses on the environment have had on stylistic trends in mainstream American cartoons. He is also currently Associate Editor at Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Publications
Books:
In progress, Williamson, Colin. Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (under contract, University of Minnesota Press)
2015 Williamson, Colin. Hidden in Plain Sight: An Archaeology of Magic and the Cinema (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press).
Edited Books:
In progress, Editor, Copy/Rights and Early Cinema (Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema), co-edited with Tami Williams, Ian Christie, Martin Johnson, and Maggie Hennefeld.
Articles in Refereed Journals:
2022 Williamson, Colin. “The Garden in the Laboratory: Arthur C. Pillsbury and the American Conservation Movement.” Philosophies 7 (5).
2022 Williamson, Colin. “The (Un)Natural History Film: Formalist Tendencies Old and New.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 20 (1): 63-73.
2021 Williamson, Colin. “Observations on the Origins of Life and Animation: David Lebrun’s Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 43 (3): 383-420.
2020 Ellis, Patrick and Colin Williamson. “Object Lessons, Old and New: Experimental Media Archaeology in the Classroom.” Early Popular Visual Culture 18 (1): 2-14.
2019 Williamson, Colin. “‘Pagan Constellations in the Sky’: (Re)Animating Muybridge in the Film History Classroom.” The Moving Image 19 (1): 75–92.
2019 Williamson, Colin. “Nature and the Wonders of the Moving Image: John Ott’s Postwar Popular Science Filmmaking.” Film History 31 (3): 27–54.
2018 Williamson, Colin. “‘An Escape into Reality’: Computers, Special Effects, and the Haunting Optics of Westworld (1973).” Imaginations 9 (1).
Chapters in Books:
2025 Williamson, Colin. “Early Animation and the Cosmopolitanism of Segundo de Chomón.” In Cook, Malcolm, Natália Pinazza, Stefanie Van de Peer and Daisy Yan Du. Encyclopedia of Animation Studies, Vol 1: Geographies and Histories (London: Bloomsbury). (Under contract)
2025 Williamson, Colin. “Wandering Eyes: A Brief Archaeology of Animated Deep Space Illusions.” In Bloom, Peter, and Dominique Jullien. Screens and Illusionism: Alternative Teleologies of Mediation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). (Under contract)
2019 Williamson, Colin. “The Politics of Vanishing Celluloid: Rediscovering Fort Rupert and the Kwakwaka’wakw in American Ethnographic Film.” In Field, Allyson Nadia, and Marsha Gordon. Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film (Durham: Duke University Press).
Honors and Awards
2020-2021 Faculty Fellow, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
2017-2018 Regional Faculty Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
2016-2017 Postdoctoral Associate, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
2013-2014 Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, MA
2013-2014 Associate, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Teaching
CINE 399: Science Fiction Film