Marita Sturken is Professor of Culture and Communication and Co-Director of the Visual Culture Program at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where she teaches courses on cultural studies, popular culture, advertising, and global culture. Before coming to NYU she was an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, and worked as a critic in independent film and video. She is author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007) and Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), and Co-Author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (2001).While working as a critic in the 1980s she wrote a series of articles for Afterimage magazine documenting the early history of video art and community video.

The Marita Sturken Papers are a part of the Downtown Collection at the Fales Library, New York University. The Fales Library is the primary special collections division of the NYU libraries, housing nearly 200,000 volumes of English and American literature from 1700 to the present. Strengths of the collection include the development of the English and American novel, with an emphasis on the Gothic and the Victorian novel. The Downtown Collection, of which the Marita Sturken Papers are a part, is a comprehensive collection of printed materials, archives, and other materials related to the Downtown New York scene from ca. 1975 to the present.

This collection is made up of original research and secondary source materials accumulated by Sturken while writing three articles about the early history of video and electronic arts for Afterimage magazine. The articles are "An Interview with George Stoney" (January 1984), "TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art" (June 1984) and "Howard Klein and the Rockefeller Foundation's Funding of the Media Arts" (January 1987). The first two articles were part of a series on video art funded by the New York State Council on the Arts Media Program. The collection consists of three subseries, representing the research generated for each article. The materials include correspondence, handwritten research notes, typed transcripts of interviews, original gallery catalogs, and photocopies of exhibition catalogs, gallery announcements, newspaper articles and magazine articles.

Selected printed materials have been removed and individually catalogued in the Downtown Collection. Records for these items can be retrieved through Bobcat.

1990 Maya Deren Awards for Independent Film and Video Artists, The 1990

1ere Semaine Internationale de Video 1985

9th Atlanta Film and Video Festival 1985

3e Semaine Internationale de Video 1989

A Report on the Television Laboratory at WNET/Thirteen 1978

Abstract Painting 1960-69 1982

Access, Film and Video Equipment: A Directory 1978

Alternating Currents 1978

American Federation of Arts Film Program, The 1984

American Film Institute Video Festival Oct 22-25 1987

American Museum of the Moving Image March 1-May 31, 1989

Art Journal Vol. 45 No. 3 1985

Art Journal Vol. 54 No. 4 1995

Audience 0.01 1991

B.A.C.A. Video Fest 1982

Beyond Video: Media Alliance Directory 1 1984

Biennial Exhibition 1983

Bill Viola 1987

Bill Viola: Arc Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris Dec 20 1983-Jan 29 1984

Black Film, British Cinema 1988

Cahiers Du Cinema Supplement to no. 328 Dec 20 1983-Jan 29 1984

Circulating Video Library 1983

Circulating Video Library v.2 1990

Documentary Video: Decades of Change 1986

Eigenwelt Der Apparate-Welt: Pioneers of Electronic Art, Ars Electronica 1992

Electronic Arts Intermix Catalog 1975

Electronic Arts Intermix Catalog 1976

Electronic Arts Intermix Catalog 1977-78

Electronic Arts Intermix Catalog 1982

Felix Vol. 1, No. 2 1992

Felix Vol. 2, No. 1 1995

Forum de Arte Contemporanea June 1989

From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS 1991

From the Academy of the Avant Garde 1981

From the Academy to the Avant Garde 1981

From TV to Video Dec 20 1983-Jan 29 1984

Heresies Vol 25: The Art of Education 1990

Heresies Vol 4, No. 4, Issue 16: Film Video 1983

Heresies Vol 6, no. 4 Issue 24: 12 Years 1989

High Performance # 56 Winter 1991

Home Made Movies: 20 Years of American 8 MM and Super-8 Films May 1-June 30, 1981

ICC Biennale '97: Communication/Discommunication 1997

Independent, The v. 9, no. 3 Apr-86

IS Journal v. 2, no. 1 1987

IS Journal v. 2, no. 2 1987

Japanese Experimental Film 1960-1980 1981

Joan Jonas, Scripts and Descriptions 1968-1982 1983

Kitchen/Video no date

Masterpieces of Moving Image Technology Sep. 10, 1988

Media Arts in Transition, The June 8 - 11 1983

Media Arts Magazine v. 1, No. 9 Spring/Summer 1985

Mostra de Video Norte-Americano Nov. 1989

Media Arts Magazine v. 2, No. 7 Spring/Summer 1990

Muntadas Exhibition May 1-31, 1987 1987

National Video FestivalJune 10-13 1982 and June 24-27, 1982

National Video Festival September 22-25 1983 and October 22-23 1983

National Video Festival September 20-23 1984

National Video Festival September 19-22 1985

New American Filmmakers 1976

New Feminist Research v.19, no. 2 June 1990

New Internationalist No. 185 July 1988

New Langton Arts Catalog of Programs 1988

New Video: Japan 1985

Paper Tiger Guide to TV Repair, The 1992

Paper Tiger Television Catalog 1993-94

Paper Tiger Television Catalog no date

Performance Text(e)s and Documents 1981

Re/Search 1991

Resolution: A Critique of Video Art 1986

Roar! Paper Tiger Television 1991

Scratching the Belly of the Beast: Cutting-Edge Media in Los Angeles, 1922-94 Film Forum. 1994

Set in Motion 1994

Shigeko Kubota June 19-Aug 25, 1996

Siggraph '83 Exhibition of Computer Art July 25-29 1983

Spheres D'Influence de Tony Oursler 1986

Steina and Woody Vasulka: Fahnrenheit 451 1995

Steina and Woody Vasulka: Machine Media 1993

Steina and Woody Vasulka: Machine Media July 25-29 1983

Steina and Woody Vasulka: Videastes 1984

Time and Memory: Video Art and Identity July 25-29 1983

TV Guides: A Collection of Thoughts about Television 1985

TV Magazine V. 1, No. 1 Spring 1983

Vasulka 1978

Video Art and Alternative Media in the United States Oct 23- Nov 23, 1997

Video Art: Expanded Forms 1988

Video By Artists 2 1986

Video Networks v. 16, no. 5 Oct/Nov 1992

Video Tape Review 1986

Video Texts: 1983 1983

Video: A Retrospective 1984

West Vol. 1, no. 1 1989

Woody Vasulka: The Brotherhood 1998

American Museum of the Moving Image Shikego Kubota Video Sculpture 1991

Brown, Wendy Deregulating Women: The Trials of Freedom Under a Thousand Points of Light. Subversions Winter 1999

Chapkis, Wendy Suggestive Language; On Sex Workers and (Other) Feminists. Subversions. Winter 1991

Goldberg, Roselee Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present 1979

Goodeve, Thyrza Female Man, The: Hysterical Jerry Professes Desire Winter 1991

Hanhardt, John G. Nam June Paik 1982

Hart, Ellen Louise Encoding of Homoerotic Desire: Emily Dickinson's Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson 1850-1886. Subversions Winter 1991

Indianapolis Museum of Art Muntadas, Words: The Press Conference Room 1991

Judson, William et al. American Landscape Video: The Electronic Grove 1988

Kruger, Barbara ed. TV Guides: A Collection of Thoughts about Television 1985

Leong, Russel Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts 1991

Lucier, Mary Wilderness Jan. 12-Feb. 16 1986

McClintic, Miranda Directions 1981 1981

Magnan, Nathalie Le Video Entre Art et Communication 1997

Marin, Lynda Mother and Child: The Erotic Bond. Subversions. Winter 1992

Marsh, Ken Independent Video 1974

Niemann, Linda Gender Roles in Cornfield Meet: A Study of Women Railroaders on the Southern Pacific. Subversions. Winter 1991

Paik, Nam June et al. Fluxus/Video 1983

Payant, Rene, ed. Video 1986

Salz, Kay Film Service Profiles 1980

Vijande, Fernando, ed. Muntadas: Exposition 1985

Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre School of Fine Arts Second Link, The: Viewpoints on Video in the Eighties 1983

Wilde, Edy and Gary Schwartz Luminous Image, The. Het Lumineuze Beeld 1984

Wilson, Robert Theater of Images, The 1974

Access Restrictions

Open to researchers. Appointments are necessary for the use of manuscript and archival collections.

Use Restrictions

Collection use is subject to all copyright laws. Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from the Director of Fales Library and Special Collections. For more information, contact

Fales Library and Special Collections

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library

70 Washington Square South

New York, NY 10012

Phone: (212) 998-2596

Fax: (212) 995-3835

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); The Marita Sturken Papers; MSS. # 209; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

The materials were donated to the Fales Library and Special Collections by Marita Sturken in March of 2008.