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Faculty in the Cinema and Digital Media Program are listed here, with titles and contact information. Click on a name to see the full biography and related items for each person, or use the “read more” links.
Stephanie Boluk is an associate professor in Cinema and Digital Media and English. Research areas include game studies, game design, media studies, computer history, and electronic literature.
Jesse Drew’s research and practice centers on alternative and community media and their impact on democratic societies, with a particular emphasis on the global working class. His audio-visual work, represented by Video Data Bank, has been exhibited at festivals and in galleries internationally. His current film project is Open Country, a feature documentary on the politics of American Country music.
Kris Fallon is a film and digital media scholar whose research focuses on non-fiction visual culture across a range of platforms, from still photography to data visualization.
Ph.D. Cornell UniversityResearch Interests: Film and media studies, German literature, Intellectual history
Currently the Director of the Davis Humanities Institute, Jaimey Fisher is Associate Professor of German and Cinema and Digital Media. He studied German literature and thought at Stanford University, at the Freie Universität Berlin, and at Cornell University.
Ph.D. Media Arts and Sciences, Duke UniversityM.F.A. Digital Media Art, University of Florida, GainsvilleB.E.D. Visualization Science, College of Architecture, Texas A&M University
Patrick LeMieux is a game designer and media theorist. Recent projects include Speculation (http://speculat1on.net), an alternate reality game that explores the culture of Wall Street investment banks in the context of the 2008 global economic crisis, and Open House (http://no-place.org), a telematic installation which allows visitors to virtually squat in a Florida home undergoing foreclosure after the U.S. housing collapse.
Ph.D. History & Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 1974B.A. Integrated Liberal Arts, St. Mary's College, Moraga, CA, 1970
Tim Lenoir is a Distinguished Professor in the Cinema and Digital Media Program. He has published several books and articles on the history of biomedical science from the nineteenth century to the present.
Ph.D. History of Science, Harvard UniversityPh.D. English and American Literature and Language, Harvard UniversityM.A. Stanford University
Colin Milburn’s research focuses on the relations of literature, science, and technology. His interests include science fiction, gothic horror, the history of biology, the history of physics, nanotechnology, video games, and the digital humanities. He is a member of the Cinema and Digital Media Program, the English Department, the Science and Technology Studies Program, and the Center for Science and Innovation Studies.
Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Toronto 2005M.Sc. Computer Science, University of Toronto 1998B. Engineering and Society, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 1996
Michael Neff is a computer scientist with interests in the arts, culture and the environment.
Diplomstudium Regie equivalent> MFA Film Director, German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB)
Biography
Branwen Okpako was born in Lagos/Nigeria. She received a BSC in political sciences from Bristol University, England in 1991, followed by MFA equivalent in film directing from the German Film & Television Academy, Berlin (dffb) in 1999.
Composer, performer, instrument builder, journalist, activist, historian, kayak instructor—Bob Ostertag’s work cannot easily be summarized or pigeon-holed. He has published 21 CDs of music, 2 films, and 3 books, and appeared at music, film, and multimedia festivals around the globe.
Julie Wyman’s 2012 documentary film STRONG! (75 min, HD) continues her visual investigation of cultural and media constructions of health, weight, gender and body image. STRONG! premiered to sold-out houses and standing ovations at Silverdocs 2012, screened in theaters nationally, and was broadcast nationally as the closing film of the 10th season of PBS’s Emmy award winning series, Independent Lens, where it won the series’ Audience Award.
Emily Albu, associate professor of Classics, teaches Classics 102: Film and the Classical World. Her article on the 2000 blockbuster, Gladiator (“Gladiator at the Millennium”) will appear in Celluloid Classics, a special issue of the journal Arethusa. Classics 102: Film and the Classical World The Classical World as portrayed in films. Viewings and discussions of modern versions of ancient dramas, modern dramas set in the Ancient Mediterranean world, and films imbued with classical themes and allusions. Supplementary readings in ancient literature and mythology. GE credit: ArtHum, Wrt.
Professor Xiaomei Chen loves to teach Chinese films that she grew up with in the People’s Republic of China. Her Chinese 101 is a popular course covering classics from the silent film era to the twentieth-first century. Her research areas include modern Chinese literature and culture, performance studies, and visual cultural studies, which can be examined through the critical analysis of films.
The annual International Short Festival (Festival International du Court-Métrage: www.clermont-filmfest.com) each February in Clermont-Ferrand, France, probably marks the beginning of my active engagement with film. Between ‘81 and ‘87, while I was living in France, I worked each year with the festival as their translator, and in the process, learnt a tremendous about film-making and the medium of film. Check out their website for the 2008 festival! Fast forward to my work here at UC Davis, and here I regularly teach courses on film in the French and Francophone world.
Sergio de la Mora is Associate Professor in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Davis. His book, Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film (University of Texas Press, 2006) was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award in the category of Art and Culture. His research and teaching interests include Latin American and Chicano/Latino film, video and literature, third cinema, popular culture, queer studies and cultural studies. His courses include Mexican Cinema, Latin/o American Cinema, Representation in Chicana/o Cinema.
Laura Grindstaff is an Associate Professor who came to UC Davis 10 years ago from the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches in the areas of popular culture, cultural sociology, gender and society, and field methods. Her research focuses broadly on American popular culture and its role in constructing gender, race, and class relations. Her first book, The Money Shot, is an ethnographic account of daytime television talkshows.
Hall Margherita Heyer-Caput completed her education in Italy (Laurea in Filosofia, 1980, University of Torino) and the United States (Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures, 1993, Harvard University), and taught for several years at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and various universities of the East Coast. Her research and teaching areas cover the Italian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to philosophical approaches to literature, Italian women writers, literature and film, Italian and Italian American Cinema.
Robert Irwin, Professor of Spanish, specializes in Mexican and Latin American cultural studies. He teaches courses on Mexican and Latin American film from a historical and transnational perspective. He is currently researching the reception of Mexican “Golden Age” film in Latin America.
For many years Andy coordinated the Computer-Aided Instruction Program for the Writing Program and the English Department, and the Faculty Mentoring Faculty Program for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He teaches classes in Writing in Education, American Literature, Literary Theory, and Poetry; and in the past has taught The Beat Generation in Poetry and Film, Creativity and Technology, Film Theory and Criticism, and The Literature of Science Fiction.
Caren Kaplan is Professor of American Studies and affiliated faculty in Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies. She is also affiliated with the Humanities Innovation Lab, the Mellon Research Initiative in Digital Cultures, and the IFHA on Gamification.
Anna K. Kuhn’s research interests include women’s literature, feminist theory, film studies and German cultural studies. She teaches the introductory course in Women’s Studies and feminist theory the senior seminar. courses on women’s literature and film courses in the program. She also teaches courses in the Comparative Literature program.
Michael J. Lazzara is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture in the Spanish Department and affiliated faculty with Film Studies and the Program in Cultural Studies. His research focuses on contemporary Latin American artistic projects from the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina), particularly those dealing with issues of dictatorship, democratic transition and traumatic memory.
Professor of Comparative Literature, and was founding co-director of Film Studies at UC Davis. His film-related courses include World Cinema, Introduction to Film, Chinese Cinema, and Hong Kong Cinema. As author and editor of half a dozen books, he has wide-ranging research interests: transnational cinema, globalization studies, Chinese literature, narrative theory, and comparative poetics.
English Professor Scott Simmon works at the intersection of film scholarship, archiving, and access, with the goal of expanding the availability of rare films.His best known publications are the Treasures from American Film Archives DVD series, the third volume of which, Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934, was released in October 2007 (and called by Film Comment, “a must-have package – a giant step in the true movie-pilgrim’s progress”).Scott frequently teaches the overview survey of international film history (English 161A & B); in 2007-08 he will teach “Film as N
Eric Smoodin is a Professor in the Programs in American Studies and Film Studies. He received his PhD in Film Studies from UCLA in 1984, and his research and teaching interests include American and European film history from1895 to 1960, the American and European film industries, the film audience, and the history of Film Studies as an academic discipline.
Juliana Schiesari is the author of The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, and co-editor of Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Her areas of research include: feminist theory, psychoanalysis, Renaissance and early modern literature, women’s literature and cultural studies. She is currently writing a book on the politics of domestication of women and animals.
Marit MacArthur is a research associate in Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis and an Associate Professor of English at California State University, Bakersfield.
Her current research is in voice studies, focusing on the quantification and perception of performative speech patterns and speech synthesis for virtual agent design. In 2015-16, she was an ACLS Digital Innovations Fellow.
Professor Li is an International Visiting Scholar from the China Agricultural University where he is an Associate Professor in the Media and Communication Department.
His current research project concerns the Earthbound China in Movies (including Folklores and Life Style in Chinese Rural Films), and the narrative of Chinese film.
Professor Anderson is considered to be one of the top women directors of English-language television and theatre, having directed at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, Abbey Theatre (Dublin), and on Broadway.
Frances Dyson, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor in Cinema and Digital Media. Her research areas are focused on sound, new media, and issues relating to technology and concepts of humanism. She often taught Virtuality (TCS 151) which explores the culture underlying the new technologies of virtual environments, telepresence, simulated experience and artificial life, through an analysis of science fiction film, and representations of post-humanism in art and popular culture.
In 1999, the ZKM medamuseum cited Lynn Hershman Leeson as the “most influential woman working in new media”. She has worked in photography, video, installation, interactive and net based works. Her 53 videotapes and 7 interactive installations have garnered many international awards. She has had over 200 exhibitions, completed 53 videotapes and 8 interactive installations. Two of her films star Tilda Swinton, Conceiving Ada and Teknolust—which received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, and was released in North Amereican in May.
Office Hours: 7:30-4:00 M-F Advising: 10:00-12:00 and 1:00-4:00 M-F
Ariel Collatz is an academic advisor and program manager for the Arts Group Advising Center. She holds a B.A. degree in History from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota and a M.S. in Counseling with a specialization in Career Development from Sacramento State University. She has worked as an undergraduate advisor at UC Davis for over 10 years. Her passion is helping students create a rewarding undergraduate experience.
Some Undergraduate alumni of Cinema and Digital Media are listed here. Because the major has changed, they graduated with a major in TCS or Film Studies, as noted. Click on CDM Alumni News at left to see what they are doing now.
Also see our Alumni and Former Student News link to see what past students of Cinema and Digital Media are up to and read about their awards and accomplishments.
