Thomas Lamarre

Thomas Lamarre is Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and Professor Emeritus of Japanese Media Studies at McGill University. He is a scholar in cinema and media studies whose work draws the history and philosophy of sciences and technologies. His works range from the communication networks of 9th century Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, 2000), to silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics, 2005), animation technologies (The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, 2009) and on television infrastructures and media ecology (The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media, 2018).

Current projects build bridges between media studies and environmental humanities. A forthcoming collection coedited with Jody Berland, Digital Animalities, explores the digital mediation of animal life in context of climate breakdown. Half Life: Radiation and Animation turns to the physics of animation to rethink the agency of radioactivity in the era of ongoing global nuclear disasters. Green Heresies: Critical Ecology and Plant Studies is a research initiative that engages with ecological approaches to intelligence emerging across AI research and plant sciences.

Lamarre’s work as a translator includes major works from Japanese and French: Kawamata Chiaki’s novel Death Sentences (University of Minnesota, 2012); Muriel Combes’s Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (MIT, 2012); David Lapoujade’s William James: Pragmatism and Empiricsm (Duke University Press, 2019); and Isabelle Stengers, Making Sense in Common (University of Minnesota, 2024).

Winter Quarter 2025

CMST 14505: Visual Style in Still and Moving Images (in Paris)

Previously taught courses: CDI Insect Media (CMST 24910); Japanese Animation: The Making of a Global Media (CMST 25620); Media Ecology (CMST 67804), Special Topics: Animation Theory (CMST 14570), Virtual Ethnography: Encounters in Mediation (CMST 27910)