Eleni Palis

Assistant Professor

Biography

Eleni Palis is an assistant professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of English, concentrating in Cinema and Media Studies. Her work focuses on the intersections between classical and post-classical American cinema, race and gender in contemporary American cinema, adaptation, genre theory, and videographic criticism.

Dr. Palis’ first monograph, Classical Projections: The Practice and Politics of Film Quotation theorizes a new term, “film quotation,” for the reuse of classical Hollywood film fragments within mainstream post-classical American cinema, arguing that film quotation is a constitutive element of post-classical authorship. This project ties scholarship on avant-garde traditions—like found-footage films, films composed of archival footage, and videographic criticism, video essays hosted online—to mainstream manifestations.

Her work has appeared in Screen, Cinema Journal, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, and Oxford Bibliographies Online.

Education

M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Publications

Books

Classical Projections: The Practice and Politics of Film Quotation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“The Brand of Peele,” Film Quarterly 77.2 (2023): 32-41.

“A Problem of ‘Fit’: Athina Rachel Tsangari and Greek ‘Weird Wave’ Cinema,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 37.2 (2022): 59-89.

“Race, Authorship, and Film Quotation in Post-Classical Cinema,” Screen 61.2 (2020): 230-254.

“The Economics and Politics of Auteurism: Spike Lee and Do the Right Thing,” Cinema Journal 57.2 (2018): 1-21.

Chapters

“Hugo (Scorsese, 2011) and Alexandre Astruc: Authorship, Historiography, and Videographic Modes” in Metacinema: Representations of Filmic Self-Reference, edited by David LaRocca (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Peer-Reviewed Videographic Criticism

“Uploading the Archive, Copy/Pasting the ‘Classical,’” Frames Issue 19: Sensing the Archive – Exploring the digital (im)materiality of the moving image archive, edited by Lucy Szemetová & Jacob Browne and guest-editor Catherine Russel (March 2022).

“Two Irises: Victims of the Actor Auteur,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies 6.1 (2019).*

*selected by British Film Institute “The Best Video Essays of 2019,” by Ariel Avissar, Will DiGravio, and Grace Lee, January 19, 2020

Bibliographic Entry

Palis, Eleni; Corrigan, Timothy. “Auteurism.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies. Ed. Krin Gabbard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.