Peter Lester

Associate Professor

Ph.D. Communication Studies, Concordia University
MA, Canadian Studies, Carleton University
BA, History, University of Guelph

Office: SBH 318
905-688-5550 x3822
plester@brocku.ca

Peter Lester (PhD Concordia University) is primarily a historian of moving images, with a particular interest in the Canadian film industry. He has an additional interest in the history of early Hollywood, and is currently researching the role of film publicity and of press agents during this era.

Research Interests

I am interested in supervising projects in the areas of:

  • Canadian film history
  • film and technology
  • exhibition studies
  • early Hollywood
  • film history

Publications and collections

  • “Keeping Continuity: Institutional Memory and the FSAC/ACÉC Newsletter,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vol.32, No.1 (Spring 2023), 151-159
  • “Making Room:  International Co-productions and Canadian National Cinema,” in Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium, Lee Carruthers and Charles Tepperman, eds. McGill-Queens University Press, 2022, 321-339.
  • “Copyright Legislation and Online Screening in the Era of COVID-19: The Canadian Context,” Teaching Media Dossier, Journal of Cinema & Media Studies, Spring 2021, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/18261332.0060.706/–copyright-legislation-and-online-screening-the-canadian?rgn=main;view=fulltext
  • “Press Agents of Change: Early Hollywood and the ‘New Publicity’.” Journal of Cinema & Media Studies, Vol. 59, no.4 (Summer 2020), 107-128.
  • “The Boundaries of National Cinema: International Co-Productions and Canadian Film Culture.” The Spaces and Places of Canadian Popular Culture. Victoria Kannen and Neil Shyminski, eds. Canadian Scholars Press, 2019.
  • (With Michael Brendan Baker) “’It’s Such a Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever’: A Genealogy of the Music Mockumentary.” The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor. Thomas Kitts and Nick Baxter-Moore, eds. 2019, pp.257-266.
  • “’Why I Am Ashamed of the Movies’: Editorial Policy, Early Hollywood and the Case of Camera!.” The Moving Image. Volume 18, Issue 1, Spring 2018, pp.48-66.
  • “A Gimli We no Longer Know: Dislocated History in Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Volume 31, Issue 6, 2014, pp. 586-596.
  • “‘Four Cents to Sea’: 16mm, the Royal Canadian Naval Film Society and the Mobilization of Entertainment,” Film History Volume 25, Issue 4, 2013, pp.62-81.

Teaching areas

  • Canadian cinema
  • Documentary media
  • Screen culture
  • Film history
  • Film genre