I received my PhD in Communications from McGill University, and have a BA and an MA in Comparative Literature and Film Studies from the University of Alberta. My main areas of interest are: film theory and film history; new digital media; documentary cinema; cultural and media studies; histories and theories of media and communications technologies; theories of representation and semiotics; philosophy and film.

Before arriving at Carleton, I was Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Lancaster University, in the UK. I have also taught at the University of Bonn in Germany, and at several universities in Canada – the University of Alberta (Comparative Literature and Film Studies), Concordia University (Cinema Studies; Communications) and McGill University (Communication Studies).

I have published on cinema and semiotics, film theory, on the philosophical cinema of Terrence Malick, and on the photographic theory of Susan Sontag. I have edited an anthology of classic texts in film theory, The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (Routledge 2010), and I am co-editor of a volume of essays entitled Cinema and Technology Palgrave 2008). I am presently preparing a book on the relations between film theory and technological change.

Selected Publications:

Latest text: Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments available from Amazon.ca

Marc Furstenau (with Adrian Mackenzie). “The Promise of ‘Makeability’: Digital Editing Software and the Structuring of Everyday Cinematic Life.” Visual Communication. 8 (1), February 2009: 5-22. vcj.sagepub.com/

Marc Furstenau, Bruce Bennett, Adrian Mackenzie, eds. Cinema and Technology: Cultures, Theories, Practices. London: Palgrave, 2008.
www.amazon.com/Cinema-Technology-Cultures-Theories-Practices/dp/023052477X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228770280&sr=8-1

Marc Furstenau. “Review of Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies. 17(2), Fall 2008: 99-102. www.filmstudies.ca/journal/cjfs/archives/Issue_17-2

Marc Furstenau. “The Ethics of Seeing: Susan Sontag and Visual Culture Studies.” Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities. 26 (2), Winter/Spring 2007: 91-104. postscriptessays.blogspot.com/2008/04/current.html

Marc Furstenau (with Leslie MacAvoy). “Terrence Malick’s Heideggerian Cinema: War and the Question of Being in The Thin Red Line,” in Hannah Patterson, ed., Poetic Visions of America: The Cinema of Terrence Malick. London: Wallflower Press, 2003: 173-185. (2nd edition, 2007). cup.columbia.edu/book/978-1-905674-26-8/the-cinema-of-terrence-malick

Marc Furstenau (with Martin Lefebvre). “Digital Editing and Montage: the Vanishing Celluloid and Beyond.” Cinémas: Revue d’études cinématographiques. 13 (1-2), 2002: 69-107. www.erudit.org/revue/cine/2002/v13/n1/index.html

Marc Furstenau, “The Superficial Aesthetics of Postmodernism,” Film-Philosophy Vol. 3, No. 1, 1999.
www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p/article/view/488