Cartwright’s article examines the role of convergence within the fields of film studies and media studies. She cites the rise in media convergence, in the 1990’as a source for the “destabilization of the young field” and the  “rise of interdisciplinary”. For Cartrwight, Film Studies as an institutionalized discipline came under fire with the emergence of interdisciplinary scholarship, which she partially attributes to the fiscal need of downsizing humanities departments. Furthermore, the convergence of media (not a new thing) for Cartwright, is all the more prescient because it is the technological convergence that then creates the institutional convergence of Interdisciplinary and in particular Visual Studies. Cartwright argues that because of the induction of digital technology such as Virtual Reality, and medical imaging technology such as Ultrasounds the need for Visual Studies becomes that much more important because these technologies are… “re-circuiting of one register of information for another, one sensory experience into another…”(17). In a sense, Visual Studies is capable of analyzing newer technologies that displace sensory input because it addresses the visual through with wider social implications. Not only is Visual Studies as a field important for Cartwright, but she also sees Film studies as. “never being about film….but has always been about conditions of sensory experience…”(22). Thus, Film Studies analyses sensory experience while Visual Studies analyses the cultural imaginings of the image. For Cartwright, both of these disciplines are informed by the emergence in technologies that require broader analysis of the object, while understanding the implications of convergence.

Cartwright, Lisa. Film and the Digital in Visual Studies: Film Studies in the Era of Convergence. Journal of Visual Culture, 2002; 1: 7-23