Murray Smith (philosopher and film theorist)

Murray Smith works in cognitive film theory and analytic philosophy of film. In [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/engaging-characters-9780198871071?cc=us&lang=en& Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema] (1995/revised edition 2022) Smith rehabilitated the idea that characters are central to our experience of narrative.{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Jeff|date=Summer 1997|title=Review: Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema by Murray Smith|journal=Film Quarterly|volume=50|pages=52–53|doi=10.2307/1213453|jstor=1213453}} His approach to our emotional responses to characters draws on cognitive science and philosophy of mind.{{Cite journal|last=Pearce|first=Lynne|date=1996|title=Review: Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema|journal=Screen|volume=37|pages=415–418|doi=10.1093/screen/37.4.415}} [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/film-theory-and-philosophy-9780198159889?q=film%20theory%20and%20philosophy&lang=en&cc=us Film Theory and Philosophy] (1997), which Smith edited with Richard Allen, makes the wider case for an approach to film drawing on the tools of analytic philosophy.{{Cite journal|last=Freeland|first=Cynthia|author-link1=Cynthia Freeland|date=2000|title=Review: Film Theory and Philosophy by Richard Allen, Murray Smith|journal=The Philosophical Review|volume=109|pages=144–147|doi=10.1215/00318108-109-1-144}} In [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/film-art-and-the-third-culture-9780198822752?q=film%2C%20art%2C%20and%20the&lang=en&cc=us Film, Art, and the Third Culture] (2017), Smith elaborates and defends the approach underpinning much of his earlier research, arguing in favour of a naturalized or ‘third cultural’ approach to aesthetics, integrating the knowledge and methods of the humanities and the sciences.{{Cite journal|last=Levinson|first=Jerrold|date=2018|title=Review: Film, Art, and the Third Culture Murray Smith|journal=The British Journal of Aesthetics|volume=58|pages=336–341|doi=10.1093/aesthj/ayx023}}{{Cite journal|last=Thomson-Jones|first=Katherine|date=2018|title=Review: Smith, Murray. Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film. Oxford University Press, 2017, xiii + 294 pp., 32 b&w illust., $45.00 cloth.|journal=The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism|volume=76|pages=356–359|doi=10.1111/jaac.12561|s2cid=191502401 }}

Smith attended Dame Alice Owen's School in Potters Bar,{{Cite web|url=http://damealiceowens.herts.sch.uk/about-us/our-team/senior-prefects/|title=School history book|date=25 February 2016}} and studied English Language and Literature at the University of Liverpool.{{Cite web|url=https://www.kent.ac.uk/arts/people/academic-staff/smith.html|title=Professor Murray Smith, University of Kent|access-date=19 April 2019}} He began his career as a film theorist as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he completed his PhD under the supervision of David Bordwell. He is the younger brother of the literary historian Professor Nigel Smith, and spouse of sociologist Professor Miri Song (University of Kent).{{Cite web|url=https://www.kent.ac.uk/sspssr/staff/academic/s/song-miri.html|title=Professor Miri Song School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research – Director of Research|website=University of Kent|access-date=19 April 2019}} Smith plays bass in the [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7uxS1JnlCvG7lH8l4zb8oX?si=KpKMOaL8Ry6gDrKlgBfUrQ Free Range Orchestra], avatars of the New Canterbury Scene.

• Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/engaging-characters-9780198183471?cc=us&lang=en&]
• Murray Smith and Richard Allen (eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).Murray Smith and Richard Allen (eds), Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/film-theory-and-philosophy-9780198159889?q=film%20theory%20and%20philosophy&lang=en&cc=us]
• Murray Smith and Steve Neale (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998).Murray Smith and Steve Neale (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998 [https://www.routledge.com/Contemporary-Hollywood-Cinema/NEALE-Smith/p/book/9780415170109]
• Murray Smith, Trainspotting (London: BFI Modern Classics, 2002).[https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/trainspotting-9780851708706/ Murray Smith, Trainspotting (London: BFI Modern Classics, 2002)]
• Murray Smith and Thomas E. Wartenberg (eds), Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2006).Murray Smith and Thomas E. Wartenberg (eds), Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2006)[https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Thinking+Through+Cinema:+Film+as+Philosophy-p-9781405154116]
• Murray Smith, Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).Murray Smith, Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/film-art-and-the-third-culture-9780198790648?q=film%20art%20and%20third%20culture&lang=en&cc=us]

• 'Feeling Prufish,' Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2010, 34 (1): 261–279.
• 'Film Theory Meets Analytic Philosophy; Or, Film Studies And L’Affaire Sokal,' Cinema, 2010, 1 (1): 111–117.
• 'Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity,' Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2006, 64 (1): 33–42.
• 'The Bad and the Beautiful'. Film-Philosophy. 2002, 6 (1).
• 'Rhetoric and Representation in Non-Fiction Film,' British Journal of Aesthetics, 2001, 41 (2): 222–225.
• 'Film Spectatorship and the Institution of Fiction,' Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1995, 53 (2): 113–127.
• 'Regarding Film Spectatorship: A Reply to Richard Allen,' Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1998, 56 (1): 63–65.
• 'The Aesthetics of Football,' with Steffen Borge and Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2015, 9 (2):93–96.

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Category:British philosophers

Category:Film theorists

Category:Living people

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

Category:Academics of the University of Kent

Category:Alumni of the University of Liverpool

Category:People educated at Dame Alice Owen's School