Programs / Graduate Program

Dissertations and Career Paths

Ph.D. 2020

Eliot Bessette
Dissertation: “Thinking Through Fear in Film and Haunts”


Ph.D. 2019

Alexandra Bush
Dissertation: “Cold Storage: A Media History of the Glacier”

Jennifer Blaylock
Research Associate in Cinema Studies, Bowdoin College
Dissertation: “Media/Fetish: A Postcolonial Archaeology of New Media and Africa”

Dolores McElroy
Lecturer, UC Berkeley Department of Film & Media
Dissertation: “Passionate Failures: The Diva Onscreen”


Ph.D. 2018

Justin Vaccaro

Dissertation: “Human Sciences, Human Monsters: the SF-Horror Film from the 1930s to 1960s”


Ph.D. 2017

Fareed Ben-Youssef

Global Perspectives on Society Teaching Fellow, NYU-Shanghai
Dissertation: “Visions of Power: Violence, the Law and the Post-9/11 Genre Film”

Patrick Ellis

Brittain Fellow, Georgia Tech University 
Dissertation: “Aeroscopics: Spectacles of the Bird’s-Eye View”

Jennifer Pranolo

Center for Humanistic Inquiry Fellow, Amherst College 
Dissertation: “Studio/World: Photography’s Other Nature”


Ph.D. 2016

Robert Alford

Assistant Director, Donor Relations at UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture 
Dissertation:“’To Know the Words to the Music’: Spatial Circulation, Queer Discourse and the Musical”

Christopher Goetz

Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Iowa 
Dissertation: “At Home Everywhere: Empowerment Fantasies in the Domestication of Videogames”

Kristen Loutensock

Dissertation: “Genre Disorder: Autism and Narrative in American Popular Culture”


Ph.D. 2015

Nicholas Baer

Assistant Professor of Film Studies, University of Groeningen
Dissertation: “Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism”

Irene Chien

Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Muhlenberg College 
Dissertation: “Programmed Moves: Race and Embodiment in Fighting and Dancing Videogames”


Ph.D. 2014

Jonathan Haynes

Dissertation : “The Mid-Atlantic : Fantasmatic Genealogies of the French and American New Waves”

George Larkin

Chair of Filmmaking, Associate Professor, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA
Dissertation: “Post-Production: The Invisible Revolution of Filmmaking”

Irina Leimbacher

Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Keene State College 
Dissertation: “More Than Talking Heads: Nonfiction Testimony and Cinematic Form”

Erica Levin

Assistant Professor of History of Art, Ohio State University 
Dissertation: “Social Media: The News in Experimental Film, Video Art, and Performance after 1960”

Kevin Wynter

Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College 
Dissertation : “Feeling Absence: Horror in Cinema from Post War to Post-Wall”


Ph.D. 2013

Kris Fallon

Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media, University of California, Davis 
Dissertation: “Where Truth Lies: Political Documentary Film & Digital Media, 2000-2010”

Jisung Kim

Dissertation: “The Initimacy of Distance: South Korean Cinema and the Conditions of Capitalist Individuation”

Rielle Navitski

Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film Studies, University of Georgia 
Dissertation: “Sensationalism, Cinema and the Popular Press in Mexico and Brazil, 1905-1930”

Damon Young

Assistant Professor of Film and Media and French, University of California, Berkeley 
Dissertation: “Making Sex Public: Cinema and the Liberal Social Body”


Ph.D. 2011

Laura Horak

Associate Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University 
Dissertation: “Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women and the Legitimation of American Silent Cinema”

Jennifer Malkowski

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Smith College 
Dissertation: “‘Dying in Full Detail’: Mortality and Duration in Digital Documentary”


Ph.D. 2010

Scott Ferguson

Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of South Florida 
Research Scholar, Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity 
Dissertation: “Recapitulation in close-up: Ontogeny, phylogeny, and the face of evolutionary time”

Meredith Hoy

Assistant Professor of Art History and Theory, Arizona State University 
Dissertation: “From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics”

Amy Rust

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of South Florida 
Dissertation: “‘Passionate Detachment’: Technologies of Vision and Violence in American Cinema, 1967 – 1974”


Ph.D. 2009

Amy Corbin

Associate Professor, Media and Communications, Muhlenberg College 
Dissertation: “Traveling spectators: Cinema, geography, and multiculturalism in late twentieth-century America”

Douglas Cunningham

Adjunct Professor, Professor of Humanities, BYU 
Adjunct Professor of Film and Media, University of Utah 
Dissertation: “Imagining Air Force identity: Masculinity, aeriality, and the films of the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit”

Tung-hui Hu

Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan
Postdoctoral Scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows, and Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, 2009-2012 
Dissertation: “Seeing Emptiness: Berlin, Nevada, and the Space of New Media”

Anupama Kapse

Associate Professor of Film Studies, Loyola Marymount University 
Film and Media Studies, Queens College, City University of New York 
Dissertation: “The moving image: melodrama and early Indian cinema 1913-1939”


Ph.D. 2008

Steve Choe

Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinema, San Francisco State University
Dissertation: “Life and death in the cinema of Weimar Germany, 1919-1924”

Hoang Tan Nguyen

Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, UC San Diego 
Dissertation: “A view from the bottom: Asian American masculinity and sexual representation”


Ph.D. 2006

Scott Combs

Associate Professor of English, St. John’s University in Queens, New York City 
Dissertation: “Final touches: Registering death in American cinema”

Minette Hillyer

Lecturer, Department of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand 
Dissertation : “Making home: Film and the modern American everyday”


Ph.D. 2005

Ara Osterweil

Assistant Professor, Department of English, McGill University 
Dissertation: “Flesh cinema: The corporeal avant-garde 1959-1979”


Ph.D. 2004

Guo-Juin Hong

Associate Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Director, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image; Academic Director, Duke in LA Program; Duke University
Dissertation: “Cinematograph of history: Post/colonial modernity in 1930s Shanghai and new Taiwanese cinema since 1982”

Maria St John

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UC San Francisco; Chair, Feminist Psychology Program, New College Graduate Psychiatry Program 
Dissertation: “The mammy fantasy: Psychoanalysis, race, and the ideology of absolute maternity”

Frank Wilderson

Professor, African-American Studies and Drama, UC Irvine 
Dissertation: “Settler, ‘savage’, slave : cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms”


Ph.D. 2003

Jonah Ross

Dissertation: “Acoustic graffiti: The rock soundtrack in contemporary American cinema”

Domietta Torlasco

Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University 
Dissertation: “Undoing the scene of the crime: Time and vision in Italian cinema”

Roy Vallis

Lecturer, Writing Program, University of California, Santa Barbara 
Dissertation: “Beowulf in Hollywood: Popular Film as Folktale and Legend”


Ph.D. 2002

Catherine Zimmer

Associate Professor of English, Pace University 
Dissertation : “Film on film: Self-reflexivity and moving image technology”

 

 

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Designated Emphasis

Juan Ospina Leon (Spanish and Portuguese, 2015)

Asst. Professor of Hispanic Studies, Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures, The Catholic University of America

Todd Barnes (Rhetoric, 2010)

Associate Professor of Literature, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Mona El-Sherif (Political Science, 2010)

Assistant Professor of Arabic, Colorado College

David Pettersen (French, 2008)

Associate Professor of Film Studies, and French Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

Elisabeth Anker (Political Science, 2007)

Associate Professor, American Studies, George Washington University

Zeynep Gürsel (Anthropology, 2007)

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College

June Hwang (German, 2007)

Associate Professor of German, University of Rochester

Rani Neutill (Ethnic Studies, 2007)

Harvard University, Committee on Degrees in History and Literature

Polina Barskova (Slavic, 2006)

Associate Professor of Russian Literature; Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies Faculty, Hampshire College

Jane McGonigal (Performance Studies, 2006)

Games designer and researcher, lecturer, consultant

Christopher Oscarson (Scandinavian, 2006)

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature, Brigham Young University

Minh-ha T. Pham (Ethnic Studies, 2006)

Associate Professor/Faculty Fellow of Social and Cultural Analysis, Pratt institute

Andrey Shcherbenok (Rhetoric, 2006)

Three-year post-doc, Columbia University, Society of Fellows; since 2010, Fellow, Russian and Slavonic Studies, The University of Sheffield

Reid Davis (Performance Studies, 2005)

Adjunct Professor, Department of Performing Arts, Saint Mary’s College, Moraga; also works extensively as a theater director.

Deborah Shamoon (Japanese, 2005)

Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame

Andrew Uroskie (Rhetoric, 2005)

Associate Professor, Art Department, Stony Brook University (fields of specialization: Late Modern and Contemporary Art, Photography and the Moving Image)

Christopher Caes (Slavic, 2004)

Lecturer in Polish/Acting Director, East Central European Center, Columbia University

Kirsten Cather (Japanese, 2004)

Associate Professor, Asian Studies, University of Texas, Austin

José Alaniz (Comparative Literature, 2003)

Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington

Jennifer Kapczynski (German, 2003)

Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Washington University, St Louis

Arne Lunde (Scandinavian, 2003)

Associate Professor, The Scandinavian Section, University of California, Los Angeles

Lucia Galleno (Spanish and Portuguese, 2002)

Associate Professor, Queens University, Charlotte, North Carolina

Jared Sexton (Ethnic Studies, 2002)

Associate Professor, African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine

Cari Borja (Anthropology, 2001)

Clothes designer. See Cariborja.com

Lilya Kaganovsky (Comparative Literature, 2000)

Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign