Biography
Dr Torchin’s research focusses on the work of screen media in bearing witness to human rights abuses, with attention to their use in advocacy campaigns. Combining analyses of text and practices of production, distribution, and exhibition, she fleshes out the relationships between seeing, recognising, and acting that are all too often flattened in the formulation, ‘if people see something, they will do something’. Her monograph, examines cases from the Armenian Genocide in silent film to Darfur on YouTube, with attention to the ways texts and contexts contributed to a popular understanding of genocide and mobilised audiences to action. , co-edited with Dina Iordanova, explores these questions with attention to film festivals. ÌýShe has also published on such subjects as the , the case of , and the .
Scholarship into the nature and function of documentary media plays a role in her research as Dr Torchin looks to the creative ways filmmakers and activists play with the form of documentary media in order to navigate trauma and to challenge authority and authoritarian command over knowledge. Her (Rithy Panh, 2014) unpicks the sedimented layers of media and memory Panh weaves together to present his experience of the Cambodian genocide, disrupted by both psychic trauma and the historical denial when perpetrators remain in power. And her work on outlines the . With work on this topic published in academic and popular venues, Dr Torchin seeks to expand cultural nonfiction media literacy, something particularly .
Her current project focusses on the role of film and screen media in forging a visual culture of economic rights, drawing connections between abstract and seemingly autonomous and neutral systems and the perpetration of human harm. Works published to date include ‘ in Film Quarterly and ‘’ in A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film.
Dr Torchin is on the international advisory board for Reframe and on the editorial board for Transnational Screens.
Teaching
I teach on the following honours modules:
FM4124 Race and Representation
FM4303 Documentary Cinema
FM4306 Feminist Film Studies
FM4110 Images and Impact: The Uses of Film
Selected publications
-
Open access
Torchin, L., 2019, In: Film Quarterly. 72, 4, p. 29-37
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
-
Torchin, L., 14 Jan 2019, Unwatchable. Baer, N., Hennefeld, M., Horak, L. & Iversen, G. (eds.). USA: Rutgers University Press, p. 86 91 p.
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Torchin, L., 1 May 2018, Docalogue.
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
-
Open access
Torchin, L., 30 Jun 2016, Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics. Tzioumakis, Y. & Molloy, C. (eds.). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, p. 123-134
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Open access
Torchin, L., 2015, In: Film Quarterly. 69, 2, p. 25-35
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
-
Torchin, L., 18 May 2015, Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures. Mulvey, L. & Backman-Rogers, A. (eds.). Amsterdam University Press, p. 141-257 (The Key Debates: Mutations and Appropriations in European Film Studies).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Torchin, L., Feb 2015, A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film. Juhasz, A. & Lebow, A. (eds.). Chichester, West Sussex, UK; Malden, MA, USA: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 108-123
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Open access
Torchin, L., 1 Sept 2014, In: Film Quarterly. 68, 1, p. 32-41 10 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
-
Torchin, L., 4 Oct 2012, Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. & Shandler, J. (eds.). Indiana University Press, p. 93-134 (The Modern Jewish Experience).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
-
Torchin, L., 1 Nov 2012, University of Minnesota Press. 275 p. (Visible Evidence)
Research output: Book/Report › Book
Ìý