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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
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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. University Orientale of NaplesM.F.A. San Francisco Art Institute
Fiamma Montezemolo is both an artist and a cultural
anthropologist. She is an established scholar in border studies
and the author of two monographs: La Mia Storia
Non La Tua: La Dinamica Della Costruzione Dell’identita’
Chicana (Guerini, 2004) and Senza volto: L’etnicità
e il genere nel Movimento Zapatista (Liguori, 1999).
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 tenth 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.
