Colin Williamson
Education
PhD, Cinema and Media Studies, The University of Chicago (2013)
BA, Film Studies, The University of California, Santa Barbara (2006)
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 media archaeology to experimental uses of film and media archives and pedagogical innovation in cinema studies. 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 (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), 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 co-founder and organizer of the inaugural Filmlandia screening series at the University of Oregon, as well as Associate Editor at Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Publications
Books:
2025 Williamson, Colin. Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (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.
Refereed Journal Articles:
2026 Williamson, Colin. “‘Sensing the Past’: Animation as Experimental Media Archaeology in the Classroom.” Artifact and Apparatus: Journal of Media Archaeology 3.
2025 Williamson, Colin. “Placing Charles Wolfe: Film History, Theory, and the Archive.” Media Fields Journal: Critical Explorations in Media and Space (Summer). https://mediafieldsjournal.squarespace.com/placing-charles-wolfe/
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).
Refereed Book Chapters:
2027 Williamson, Colin and Eric Dyer. “Zoetropic Art as Expanded Animation Practice.” In Expanded Animation: Synaesthetic Syntax. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2027 Williamson, Colin. “Early Animation: International Exchange and Transnational Developments.” In Cook, Malcolm, Natália Pinazza, Stefanie Van de Peer and Daisy Yan Du. Encyclopedia of Animation Studies, Vol 1: Geographies and Histories (London: Bloomsbury).
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).
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
2026 Faculty Research Mentor Award, Center for Undergraduate Research and Engagement, Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success, University of Oregon
2026 Tykeson Teaching Award, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oregon
2026 Faculty Research Award, Office for the Vice President of Research and Innovation, University of Oregon
2025 Summer Stipend for Humanities and Creative Arts, University of Oregon
2024 Publication Subvention, Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon
2024 Williams Instructional Grant, “Hands-On Film History,” University of Oregon
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 265: History of the Motion Picture 1
CINE 430: American Animation, University of Oregon
CINE 490/590: Hands-On Film History, University of Oregon
CINE 305: Science Fiction Film, University of Oregon
CINE 260: Media Aesthetics, University of Oregon
CINE 305: Introduction to Animation Studies, University of Oregon
CINE/ENG 110M: Introduction to Film & Media, University of Oregon
CINE 399 Science Fiction, University of Oregon
CINE 410: American Animation, University of Oregon