# Thomas Lamarre

**Source**: https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/thomas-lamarre-0
**Parent**: https://cms.uchicago.edu/about/faculty-bookshelf

Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College

[tlamarre@uchicago.edu](mailto:tlamarre@uchicago.edu)

Classics 306

Research Interests: 
Media history and theory; animation and new media; critical race studies; transnational television; animal studies; science and technology studies; Japanese and continental philosophy; ritual theory and practice; early and medieval Japanese culture

## Biography

Thomas Lamarre is Gordon J Laing Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and Professor Emeritus of Japanese Media Studies at McGill University. He is a scholar in cinema and media studies whose work draws the history and philosophy of sciences and technologies. His works range from the communication networks of 9th century Japan (*Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription*, 2000), to silent cinema and the global imaginary (*Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics*, 2005), animation technologies (*The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation*, 2009) and on television infrastructures and media ecology (*The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media*, 2018).

Current projects build bridges between media studies and environmental humanities. A forthcoming collection coedited with Jody Berland, *Digital Animalities*, explores the digital mediation of animal life in context of climate breakdown. *Half Life: Radiation and Animation* turns to the physics of animation to rethink the agency of radioactivity in the era of ongoing global nuclear disasters. *Green Heresies: Critical Ecology and Plant Studies* is a research initiative that engages with ecological approaches to intelligence emerging across AI research and plant sciences.

Lamarre’s work as a translator includes major works from Japanese and French: Kawamata Chiaki’s novel *Death Sentences* (University of Minnesota, 2012); Muriel Combes’s *Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual* (MIT, 2012); David Lapoujade’s *William James: Pragmatism and Empiricsm* (Duke University Press, 2019); and Isabelle Stengers, *Making Sense in Common* (University of Minnesota, 2024).

## Publications

[Thomas Lamarre](https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/thomas-lamarre-0)

## Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription

Duke University Press, 2000

[Thomas Lamarre](https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/thomas-lamarre-0)

## The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation

University of Minnesota Press, 2009

[Thomas Lamarre](https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/thomas-lamarre-0)

## The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

[Thomas Lamarre](https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/thomas-lamarre-0)

## Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun'ichirô on Cinema and "Oriental" Aesthetics

U of M Center for Japanese Studies, 2005

## Teaching

**Winter Quarter 2025**

CMST 14505: Visual Style in Still and Moving Images (in Paris)

*Previously taught courses: CDI Insect Media (CMST 24910); Japanese Animation: The Making of a Global Media* (CMST 25620); *Media Ecology*(CMST 67804), *Special Topics: Animation Theory* (CMST 14570), *Virtual Ethnography: Encounters in Mediation* (CMST 27910)