Dr Mario Slugan

Profile

My research stands on the intersection of film studies, philosophy and German studies. My book-length projects have been on the history, theory, and aesthetics of montage across literature, film, and visual arts – Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (Camden House, 2017) – on the application of philosophical aesthetics to film theory – Noël Carroll on Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2019) – and on the way fiction and non-fiction was understood prior to the emergence of labels such as “documentary” and disclaimers such as “all persons fictitious” –  Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema: A Philosophical Approach to Film History (Bloomsbury, 2019, BAFTSS 2021 Best Monograph Runner-up). My latest monograph – Taking Film Fiction Seriously: A Philosophical Approach to Cinema Studies (Bloomsbury, 2025, forthcoming) – bridges film studies and philosophy of fiction, to provide a rare theory of what fiction film is.

I have also co-edited a number of special issues, including Fiction in Central and Eastern European Film Theory and Practice (with J. Alexander Bareis, 8 2019) and Pandemic Cinema in Central and Eastern Europe (with Raoul Eshelman and Denise J. Youngblood, 12 2021) for Apparatus, special issues of Projections (with Enrico Terrone, 14.3 2020), Studies in Documentary Film (with Enrico Terrone, 2021, BAFTSS 2022 Best Edited Volume Third Place), Rivista di Estetica  (with Enrico Terrone, 2023), and Croatian Journal of Philosophy (with Iris Vidmar Jovanović and David Grčki, 2024). The book New Perspectives on Early Cinema: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences (with Daniël Biltereyst, Bloomsbury, 2022) was awarded BAFTSS 2023 Best Edited Volume Runner-up.

I have co-organized four international conferences as well – Film Studies and Analytic Aesthetics (with Enrico Terrone, Oct 26-27, 2018, University of Warwick,), Rethinking the Attraction-Narrative Dialectics (with Daniël Biltereyst, Nov 9-10, 2018, Ghent University), and Documentaries and the Fiction/Nonfiction Divide (with Enrico Terrone, Nov 15-16, 2019, Queen Mary University of London), Experimental Film, Video Art, and the Borders of Cinema: A British Society of Aesthetics Synergy Conference (with Enrico Terrone, May 25-27, 2022, Queen Mary University of London), and Scientific, Neuroscientific and Philosophical Approaches to Learning from Art (with Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Dec 5-6, 2024, University of Rijeka)

I am also one of the editors of Early Popular Visual Culture and Fellow of the Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image.

I welcome PhD applicants interested in film philosophy (especially analytic philosophy), film theory (especially cognitivism), early cinema, montage, German cinema, and Yugoslav cinema.

Teaching

FLM5208 – Visual Essay

FLM6042/7042 – Montage Across the Arts: Aesthetics, Modernity, Politics

FLM6058/7058 – Cognitive Film Theory

Research

Research Interests:

Research Projects:

Co-I, “Aesthetic Education through Narrative Art and its Relevance for the Humanities” (PI Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Croatian Science Foundation, 2021-26)

Research Interests:

• film theory
• film philosophy
• film history
• early cinema
• avant-garde and modernist cinema and literature
• montage
• American cinema
• German cinema
• Eastern European cinemas
• adaptation
• techniques of visual immersion (panorama, Hale’s Tours, VR, etc.)
• empirical studies of film

Publications

Monographs

• Taking Fiction Seriously: A Philosophical Approach to Film Studies. Bloomsbury, 2025. [forthcoming]
• Fiction and Imagination in Early Cinema: A Philosophical Approach to Film History. Bloomsbury, 2019. [Second Place: The 2021 BAFTSS Best Monograph Award]
• Noël Carroll and Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury, 2019.
• Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatzfrom Döblin to Fassbinder. Camden House, 2017.

Edited Volumes

• Co-edited with James Burns, “Early Cinema in the British Colonies”, Early Popular Visual Culture 2025 25(1-2)
• Co-edited with Iris Vidmar Jovanović and David Grčki, “Truth, Fiction and Literature”, Croatian Journal of Philosophy 2024 24(70)
• Co-edited with Enrico Terrone, “The Philosophy of Television Series”, Rivista di Estetica, 2023(2) https://www.rosenbergesellier.it/ita/titolo?ref=1625
• Co-edited with Enrico Terone, “The Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction: Documentary Studies and Analytic Aesthetics in Conversation” Studies in Documentary Film, 2021 15(2) [Third Place: The 2022 BAFTSS Best Edited Volume Award]
• Co-edited with Daniël Biltereyst,New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Methods, Applications. Bloomsbury, 2022 [Second Place: The 2023 BAFTSS Best Edited Volume Award]
• Co-edited with Raoul Eshelman and Denise J. Youngblood, Special Issue “Pandemic Movies in Central and Eastern European Film and Television”, Apparatus: Film, Media, & Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe12, 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2021.00012
• Co-edited with Enrico Terrone, Special Issue “Film Studies and Analytic Aesthetics in Dialogue”, Projections: Journal for Movies and Mind, 14(3), 2020 https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/projections/14/3/projections.14.issue-3.xml
• Co-edited with J. Alexander Bareis, Special Issue “Fiction in Central and Eastern European Film Theory and Practice”, Apparatus: Film, Media, & Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe8, 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2019.0008

Articles and Book Chapters      

• Co-authored with James Burns, “Introducing Early Cinema in the British Colonies”, Early Popular Visual Culture 2025 25(1-2), 2022 [forthcoming]
• Co-authored with Ata Zawavi and Weijia Zeng, “Hale’s Tours in Singapore and Hong Kong”, Early Popular Visual Culture 2025 25(1-2) [forthcoming]
• “Melodrama of the Unknown Woman Lost in Space: A Cavellian Reading of the Alien Franchise”, in Nathan Abrams and Greg Frame (eds), Alien Legacies, Oxford University Press, 2023: 200-214. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197556023.003.0011
• “Changing Minds: Fiction, Beliefs, and Emotion”, in Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, and Françoise Lavocat (eds), Can Fiction Change the World? Legenda: Oxford, 2023: 69-81
• “Fiction as Challenge for Text-Oriented Film Studies”, New Review of Film and Television, 2023 (3): 427-450 https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2132072
• Co-authored with Daniël Biltereyst, “Introduction”, in Mario Slugan and Daniël Biltereyst (eds), New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences. Bloomsbury, 2022: 1-18
• “Early Cinema and the Philosophy of Imagination”, in Mario Slugan and Daniël Biltereyst (eds), New Perspectives on Early Cinema History: Concepts, Approaches, Audiences. Bloomsbury, 2022: 103-130
• Co-authored with Maarten Coëgnarts, “Embodying Meaning Visually: From Perceptual Dynamics to Motion Kinematics”, Art & Perception, 2022 10: 137-158 https://doi.org/10.1163/22134913-bja10035
• “Pandemic (Movies): Pragmatic Analysis of a Nascent Genre”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2022 39(4): 890-918 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1890975
• “Fiction, Knowledge and Cinematic Realism”, Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 2021 13: 99-110 http://www.jtpcrim.org/OCT2021/Mario.pdf
• “Textualism, Extratextualism, and the Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction in Documentary Studies”, Studies in Documentary Film, 2021 15(2): 114-126 https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1923142
• Co-authored with Enrico Terrone, “The Fiction/Nonfiction Distinction: Documentary Studies and Analytic Aesthetics in Conversation”, Studies in Documentary Film, 2021 15(2): 107-113 https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1923141
• “Pandemic (Movies): Pragmatic Analysis of a Nascent Genre”, Quarterly Review of Film and Television, 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2021.1890975
• “R. W. Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz as a Remake?”, in Eduard Cuelenaere, Gertjan Willems, and Stijn Joye (eds), European Film Remakes, Edinburgh University Press, 2021: 59-72
• “Film Studies and the Experimental Method”, NECSUS Autumn 2020_#Method 9(2): 203-224 https://necsus-ejms.org/film-studies-and-the-experimental-method/
• “The Film Narrator and Early American Screenwriting Manuals”, Early Popular Visual Culture, 17(3), 2019: 1-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2019.1623058
• “Theorizing Fiction in Film Non/Fiction: Some Thoughts on Recent German Film Theory”, Apparatus: Film, Media, & Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 8, 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2019.0008.161
• Co-authored with J. Alexander Bareis, “Introducing Fiction in Central and Eastern European Film Theory and Practice”, Apparatus: Film, Media, & Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, 8, 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2019.0008.169
• “The Turn-of-the-Century Understanding of ‘Fakes’ in the US and Western Europe”, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 16(1), 2019: 718-737. https://participations.org/Volume%2016/Issue%201/35.pdf
• “The Role of Imagination in Early Cinema: Fiction and Non-Fiction in Phantom Rides, Travelogues, and Hale’s Tours”, in Rüdiger Steinmetz (ed.) A Treasure Trove. Friend of the Photoplay – Visionary – Spy? New Trans-Disciplinary Approaches to Hugo Münsterberg’s Life and Ouevre, Leipzig: Leipzig University Press, 2018: 25-46.
• “Taking Bazin Literally,” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 11(1), 2017: 63-82 http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/proj.2017.110105
• “Late 1920s Film Theory and Criticism as a Test-Case for Benjamin’s Generalizations on the Experiential Effects of Editing,” Early Popular Visual Culture, 14(3), 2016: 215-233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2016.1199322[Third Place: The 2017 BAFTSS Best Journal Article Award]
• “Deixis in Literary and Film Fiction: Intra-Ontological Reference and the Case of the Controlling Fictional Narrator,” in J. Alexander Bareis and Lene Nordrum (eds.) How to Make Believe: The Fictional Truths of Representational Arts, New York; Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2015: 185-202. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110443875-011
• “Some Thoughts on Controlling Fictional Narrators in Fiction Film,” American Society of Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal, 6(2), 2014: 1-7. http://www.asage.org/index.php/ASAGE/article/view/155
• “The Rhetorics of Interpretation and Žižek’s Approach to Film,” Slavic Review, 72(4), 2013: 728-749.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.72.4.0728
• Elicited a response from: Slavoj Žižek, “Reply,” Slavic Review, 72(4), 2013: 771-777. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.72.4.0771 .
• “Epistemology as Ethics: Skepticism in Blade Runner,” Film and Philosophy, 16, 2012: 82-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/filmphil2012167
• “Responses to Balkanism in Emir Kusturica’s Život je čudo/Life Is a Miracle (2004),” Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 2(1), 2011: 37-48. https://doi.org/10.1386/seec.2.1.37_1
• “An Asymmetry of Implicit Fictional Narrators in Literature and Film,” Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, 7(2), 2010: 26-37. http://debatesinaesthetics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/PJA-VOL-7-No-2-3.pdf
• Co-authored with Bojana Dalbelo-Bašić, “Connectionistic Model of Language Acquisition.” Proceedings to the European Modeling Symposium, 2006.

Supervision

Current PhDs:

• Weijia Zeng: “Alfred Hitchcock and his Specters” (Chinese Scholarship Council funded, 2020-ongoing, co-supervised with Dr Alasdair King)
• Nancy Wilson: “Beyond the Rubble: The Spaces of the Trümmerfilme” (LAHP funded, 2021-ongoing, co-supervised with Dr Alasdair King)
• Ata’ Hanifee Bin Zawawi: “Towards a Poetics Model of Intersemiotic Translation: Literary Stylistics and the Multimodal Approach” (Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education funded, 2021-ongoing, co-supervised with Prof Else Viera)
• Abtin Eslahpazir Esfandabadi “The Origin and Characteristics of Embedded Narration in Iranian Avant-Garde Cinema” (2022-ongoing, co-supervising with Dr Yasmin Fedda)
• Giulia Rainoldi, “An Apology of Immersive Museums: Jean-Luc Nancy and the (Political) Transgression of the Projected Moving Image” (QMUL Principal Fellowship funded, 2022-ongoing, co-supervising with Prof Lucy Bolton)