August 11, 1995 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408/459-2495)

THEATER ARTS PROFESSOR WINS AWARD FROM LEADING FILM STUDIES JOURNAL FOR ARTICLE ON WHITE SLAVE FILMS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Shelley Stamp Lindsey, assistant professor of theater arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is one of two scholars selected as recipients of the 1994 award for excellence from Screen, an international journal of film and television studies. Lindsey won £500 for her article, "'Is any Girl Safe?': Female Spectators at the White Slave Films." The article will be published in Screen in the spring of 1996.

Lindsey's article examines aspects of a popular brand of film in the early 1900s--white slave films. "These were early feature films, silent melodramas, that told stories of young women lured or forced into prostitution. They had titles like Traffic in Souls and Little Lost Sister," Lindsey says.

"The films were one component of a large-scale panic during the 'teens when talk of white slavery was taken quite seriously," Lindsey says. But, she notes, there is little historical evidence to account for the panic. "Few documented cases of women being drugged and forced to work in prostitution actually exist. Instead, warnings against slave traffickers preying upon innocent victims reflected society's apprehensions about young working women participating in a growing leisure culture that included the cinema."

An unexpected aspect of these films was their popularity with women, Lindsey says. "Women weren't supposed to be interested in such risque material. At this time, the industry was trying to improve its reputation by appealing to middle-class female patrons. That precisely these same movie-goers were attracted to such salacious fare was disconcerting, to say the least."

Lindsey's article was one of two selected by a panel of four judges from more than 100 articles and research papers submitted to Screen during 1994. Screen is a quarterly journal published at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, considered to be one of the most prominent film and television studies journals in publication. Winners were announced in July. Along with publication in Screen, Lindsey's article will appear as part of a chapter in a book she is writing about women and film in the 1910s.

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