Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)

About this episode

Aurore Spiers discusses her book on women's contributions to film history in France from 1927 to 1978.

What happens when we assume women’s presence in film history instead of their absence? This is the question at the heart of Archiving the Past: Women’s Film History in France, 1927–1978, the newest addition to the Feminist Media Histories book series at the University of California Press. The first book by Aurore Spiers, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Texas A&M University, Archiving the Past is a fascinating account of some of the many women in France whose labor had a decisive role in the formation of cinema history across the twentieth century. Aurore shows that the film-historical archive has always been a site of feminist agency and power, even if women’s work in and around the archive has been diminished, interrupted, erased, or ignored. In this conversation with fellow feminist film scholar Alix Beeston, Aurore shares about the historical, methodological, and political stakes of her work, from the archive to the classroom. She describes her process for discerning the traces of women’s archival labor, however fleeting, contingent, or speculative they may be. She reflects on how gendered ideas and norms have defined—and limited—our sense of what counts…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Aurore Spiers

Topics covered

• women in film history
• feminist media studies
• film archives
• gender and cinema
• historical methodology

Keywords

• women's film history
• feminist agency
• film archives
• gender norms
• cinema history

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of California Press, Texas A&M University

Books & works: Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978

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