Big Screen: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Lucy Fischer is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh where she directed the Film Studies Program for thirty years. She is the author of fifteen books: Jacques Tati (1983), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema (1989), Imitation of Life (1991), Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (1996), Sunrise (1998), Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (2003), Stars: The Film Reader (2004), American Cinema of the 1920s: Themes and Variations (2009), Teaching Film (co-edited with Patrice Petro/2012), Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema (2013), Art Direction and Production Design (2015), Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History (2017), Cinemagritte: René Magritte Within the Frame of Film History, Theory and Practice (2019), Emotion Pictures: Cinema and Feelings (2023), and Recollecting Collecting: Film and Media Studies Perspectives (2023). She has held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), and has been the recipient of both a National Endowment for the Arts Art Critics Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Professors. She has served as President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2001-3) and in 2008 received its Distinguished Service Award. In 2016, she received the Chancellor’s Research Award for Senior Scholars and in 2017 the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring at the University of Pittsburgh.

Patrice Petro is Professor of Film and Media Studies, Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, and Presidential Chair in Media Studies. She is the author, editor, and co-editor of fourteen books, including Uncanny Histories in Film and Media Studies (2022), The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender (with Kristin Hole, Dijana Jelaca, and E. Ann Kaplan, 2017), Teaching Film (2012), Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s (2010), Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the “War on Terror” (2006), and Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History (2002). She served two terms as President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the largest U.S. professional organization for college and university educators, filmmakers, historians, critics, scholars, and others devoted to the study of the moving image.