Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University, USA. He has authored, co-authored, and edited nineteen books on film and cultural theory, national cinemas, politics and aesthetics, and comparative race and postcolonial studies. His books include: Reflexivity in Film and Literature (1985,1995); Brazilian Cinema (1982);Subversive Pleasures:(1989); Tropical Multiculturalism (1997); Film Theory: An Introduction (2000); Literature through Film (2005); Francois Truffaut and Friends (2006); Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics (2015); and World Literature, Transnational Cinema,and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons (2019) He is co-author, with Ella Shohat, of Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994) Flagging Patriotism; (2006); and Race in Translation: (2012); He has taught in France, Tunisia, Brazil, Germany, and Abu Dhabi. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages.
With this book, Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze: Transnational Imaginaries, Media Aesthetics, and Social Thought, the always brilliant scholar Bob Stam has given us another tour de force. In this new work he tracks how -- over 500 years -- the possibilities of contemporary Indigenous media emerged in the Americas, with special attention to Brazil. He traces the colonial circumstances and European imaginaries that produced the Protocols of Anti-Indigenism, morphed into the transnational Indian , and landed in the rich dialogue emerging from contemporary Indigenous media. Witty, erudite, and politically engaged, this book is essential reading for those who hope to decolonize cinema studies and locate Indigenous media making in a rich historical context. -- Faye Ginsburg, Kriser Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for Media, Culture & History, NYU, USA.