University of Pittsburgh Professor Honored With Distinguished Service Award for Cinematic and Media Studies

PITTSBURGH—Lucy Fischer, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Film Studies Program and a Distinguished Professor of English, has been awarded the 2008 Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). The award will be presented March 6 at the organization's annual conference in Philadelphia.

Awardees are selected annually by the society's elected officers and board of directors to recognize members who have served the organization. Fischer has been an active member of the society for several decades, first as a graduate student, then as a junior faculty member, and presently as a professor and senior scholar. She has served as both president and vice president from 1999 to 2005 and has worked on many SCMS committees. As its Conference Program Committee chair, Fischer has twice organized and hosted SCMS's annual national conference in Pittsburgh.

Fischer has published extensively on issues of film history, theory, and criticism. She is the author of several books, including "Stars: The Film Reader" (Routledge, 2004),"Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema, and the Female Form" (Columbia University Press, 2003), "Sunrise" (British Film Institute, 1998), "Genre"(Princeton University Press, 1996), "Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre" (Princeton University Press, 1996), "Imitation of Life" (Rutgers, 1991), "Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema" (Princeton University Press/Macmillian, 1989), and "Jacques Tati" (G.K. Hall, 1983).

Fischer has held curatorial positions within the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at City College of New York in 1966 and a master's degree in education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. In 1968, she received a professional diploma in the Teaching of English from Columbia University. In the field of film studies, Fischer earned MA and PhD degrees in cinema studies at New York University, in 1973 and 1978, respectively.

Founded in 1959, SCMS is a professional organization of college and university educators, filmmakers, historians, critics, scholars, and others devoted to the study of the moving image.

###

3/4/08/amm