Join us for the Documentary Audit Book Launch! September 19, 6PM at NYU's Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway. Register here to attend in person or on Zoom: tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studi... With special guests Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Jordan Lord, and LaCharles Ward.
A brown hand holding a red book, titled The Documentary Audit: Listening and the Limits of Accountability - Pooja Rangan.
Tomorrow is the first of two book launches for The Documentary Audit!
Visible Evidence Conference Philadelphia
Monday, August 4 | 9:00–10:45AM | Temple University City Center Room 222
With Respondents Paige Sarlin, Pavitra Sundar, Neta Alexander, and Tory Jeffay
Copies of a book nestled in a cardboard box. Description of the book cover: The title of the book (The Documentary Audit) appears in bold black text against a deep crimson background that fades to pink toward the bottom right. The book's subtitle (Listening and the Limits of Accountability) and the author's name (Pooja Rangan) appear in smaller pink letters.
It's here!! Just in time to share with folks at Goethe Universität, Frankfurt during my Mercator Fellowship! For anyone interested in how documentary forms ask audiences to listen in order to hold power to account -- order at cup.columbia.edu/.../the.../9... (use code CUP20 for 20% discount)
The deep crimson image, fading to pink toward the bottom right, is produced by the filmmaker holding their finger over the lens to obscure the camera's view.
The book's subtitle (Listening and the Limits of Accountability) and the author's name (Pooja Rangan) appear in smaller pink letters. The background image on the book cover is a frame from Jordan Lord's Shared Resources (2021).
Description of the book cover: The title of the book (The Documentary Audit) appears in bold black text against a deep crimson background that fades to pink toward the bottom right.
The Documentary Audit Listening and the Limits of Accountability Pooja Rangan Columbia University Press Documentary films are often celebrated with aural metaphors: they give “voice” to the “voiceless” and ask the public to “listen.” But when did listening become synonymous with social justice? How exactly do documentaries train audiences to listen when they ask them to right historic wrongs or hold power to account? The Documentary Audit challenges the association of listening with accountability and charts oppositional modes of listening otherwise. Pooja Rangan develops a framework for understanding how documentary practices have, under the mantle of accountability, provided a moral cover for listening habits that are used to profile, exclude, and incarcerate. From the British Crown’s promotional films to Zoom meeting recordings, from disability-informed filmmaking in Japan to forensic efforts to expose anti-Palestinian violence in Hebron, Rangan explores how historical and contemporary practitioners have challenged and refused the lures of normative documentary listening habits in order to listen with an accent, listen in crip time, and listen like an abolitionist. Through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges documentary and sound studies while considering raciolinguistics, disability access, and legal forensics, Rangan demonstrates how the question of listening is central to the study of documentary. Far from being a neutral ethic, The Documentary Audit shows, listening creates the reality it purports to verify—with transformative political possibilities. Pooja Rangan is professor of English in film and media studies at Amherst College. She is the author of Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (2017) and coeditor of Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023). Order Online: CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU Enter Code CUP20 for 20% discount
Out in June from Columbia University Press--THE DOCUMENTARY AUDIT. All of the information on the flier available on this website, where you can also order the book: cup.columbia.edu/.../the.../9... Cover description in comments
Thanks for saying hi!! Lovely to know about your work too—I was in Santa Cruz earlier this year and would have loved to meet and chat!
The crimson background image on the cover, fading to pink, is a still from Jordan Lord's Shared Resources (2021), produced by the filmmaker holding their finger over the lens to obscure the camera's view.
The title of the book (The Documentary Audit) appears in bold black text against a deep crimson background that fades to pink toward the bottom right. The book's subtitle (Listening and the Limits of Accountability) and the author's name (Pooja Rangan) appear in smaller pink letters.
I wrote a book on how justice-driven documentaries teach us to listen—and how those listening habits can perpetuate injustice or bring about transformative change. Coming soon from Columbia UP, read more about it here: cup.columbia.edu/book/the-doc...
I’m trying!
I recently got to attend a film festival at Sing Sing prison. Here are some thoughts on the visit—on how prisons use progressive programming to justify their existence and the difficulties of pursuing liberation through art within their punishing constraints.
hi everyone! i look forward to never posting here instead of on twitter
