Core Faculty
Catherine Benamou
she/her/hers
cbenamou@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., New York University, Cinema Studies
Research interests: Hispanophone and Lusophone cinema and television, U.S. Latinx media, Orson Welles, transnational media, media and social justice, cinematic memory and cultures of preservation
Published Books:
It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey (University of California Press, 2007)
Transnational Television and Latinx Diasporic Audiences: Abrazos Electrónicos in Four Global Cities (Springer, 2022)
Desha Dauchan
she/her/hers
ddauchan@uci.edu
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M.F.A., UCLA, Directing/Production
Research interests: Media and Activism, African American Film, African Diaspora Cinema, Oral History, Screenwriting, Directing & Film Production M.F.A., UCLA, Directing/Production.
Sohail Daulatzai
he/him/his
sdaulatz@uci.edu
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Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinematic Arts
Research interests: Decolonization, Black Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, Imperial culture, Race, Aesthetics, Politics
Published Books:
Co-editor with Michael Eric Dyson, Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic (Civitas Books, 2009)
Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
Return of the Mecca: The Art of Islam and Hip-Hop (Razor Step, 2014)
Fifty Years of The Battle of Algiers: Past as Prologue (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Co-editor with Junaid Rana, With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism and Empire (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)
Arcelia Gutiérrez
she/her/hers
arceliag@uci.edu
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Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., University of Michigan, Romance Languages & Literatures
Research Interests: Latinx Media Studies, Media Activism, Media Policy, Industry Studies
Bambi Haggins
she/her/hers
bhaggins@uci.edu
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Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., UCLA, Film & Television
Research Interests: Black African-American Comedy in Film, Television History, Digital Media and Performance, Comedy as Social and Political Discourse, African-American Studies, American Studies
Published Books:
Laughing Mad (Rutgers University Press, 2007)
U.S. Television and Cultural Studies (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2009)
Kristen Hatch
she/her/hers
khatch@uci.edu
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Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor for Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., UCLA, Film, Television, and Digital Media
Research Interests: Classical Hollywood, American Film History, Histories of Race, Gender and Sexuality, Stardom, Childhood and Girlhood Studies
Published Books:
Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood (Rutgers University Press, 2015)
Lucas Hilderbrand
he/him/his
lucas.h@uci.edu
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Department Chair and Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., New York University, Cinema Studies
Research Interests: Queer Cultures and Media, Pornography, Cultural Studies, Documentary, Media Infrastructures, Popular Music, Histories of Technology
Published Books:
Co-editor with Kate Horsfield, Feedback: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art and Artist Interviews (Temple University Press, 2006)
Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (Duke University Press Books, 2009)
Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013)
Co-editor with David Evans Frantz and Kaleigh Perkov, Cock, Paper, Scissors (ONE Archives, 2016)
The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After (Duke University Press, 2023)
Victoria E. Johnson
she/her/hers
v.e.johnson@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinema-Television
Research interests: Television, Sports Media, Critical Race Theory, Cultural Geography
Published Books:
Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity (NYU Press, 2008)
Sports TV (Routledge, 2021)
Meryem Kamil
she/her/hers
mkamil@uci.edu
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Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., University of Michigan, American Culture
Research Interests: New Media Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Palestine/Palestinian Social Movements, Ethnic Studies, American Studies
Published Books:
Co-author with Precarity Lab, Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths Press, 2020)
Peter Krapp
he/him/his
krapp@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies; English; Informatics; Music
Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara, German & Comparative Literature
Research Interests: Secret Communications and Cybernetics (Cryptologic History), Cultural Memory and Media History (Games and Simulations, History of Computing), Aesthetic Communication (Title Design, Film Music)
Published Books:
Deja Vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
Translator, Markus Krajewski, Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 (MIT Press, 2011)
Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture (Electronic Mediations) (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)
Co-editor with Ludwig Jäger, Werner Holly, Samuel Weber, and Simone Heekeren, Sprache - Kultur - Kommunikation/ Language - Culture - Communication (De Gruyter Mouton, 2016)
Keiji Kunigami
he/him/his
akunigam@uci.edu
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Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., Cornell University, Asian Studies
Research Interests: Brazilian Cinema, Japanese Cinema, Critical Race Theory, Film and Media Theory, Critical Theory, Silent Cinema, Decoloniality, Cinematic Embodiment, Asian-Latin American Studies
Catherine Liu
she/her/hers
catherine.liu@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies and Comparative Literature
Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center, French
Research Interests: Historical Materialism, New Taiwan Cinema, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Sinophone Cinema, Political Economy of Film and Media Studies, Genre Film, Class and Contradiction, History and Theory of Trauma Studies and Trauma Media
Published Books:
Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton (University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
Co-editor with John Mowitt, Thomas Pepper, and Jakki Spicer, The Dreams of Interpretation: A Century down the Royal Road (University of Minnesota Press, 2007)
American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique (University of Iowa Press, 2011)
Oriental Girls Desire Romance (Kaya Press, 2012)
Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Glen Mimura
he/him/his
gmimura@uci.edu
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Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness
Research Interests: Third Cinema; Asian American Film and Media; Native American and Indigenous Film and Media; the Western and Martial Arts Genres; Animals and Representation
Published Books:
Ghostlife of Third Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
Philana Payton
she/her/hers
paytonp@uci.edu
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Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinema and Media Studies
Research Interests: Black Film and Television History, Black Popular Culture, Performance Studies, Classical Hollywood, Stardom, Women and Gender Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies
Allison Perlman
she/her/hers
aperlman@uci.edu
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Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor of Film and Media
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, American Studies
Research Interests: TV Studies, Media Policy and Law, Media Activism, Popular Memory, Public Media, Media History
Published Books:
Co-editor with Michael Kackman, Marnie Binfield, Matthew Thomas Payne, and Bryan Sebok, Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (Routledge, 2011)
Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles over U.S. Television (Rutgers University Press, 2016)
Fatimah Tobing Rony
she/her/hers
fatimah@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., Yale University, History of Art
M.F.A., UCLA, Directing/Production
Research Interests: Narrative, Experimental, and Documentary Film Production, Visual Biopolitics, History and Theory of Ethnographic Film, Transnational Cinema, Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Film Theory, Visual Studies, Animation
Published Books:
The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle (Duke University Press Books, 1996)
How Do We Look? Resisting Visual Biopolitics (Duke University Press, 2022)
Films:
On Cannibalism (1994)
Demon Lover (1998)
Everything in Between (2000)
Chants of Lotus (Perempuan Punya Cerita) (2008)
Annah la Javanaise (2020)
Bo Ruberg
they/them/theirs
bruberg@uci.edu
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Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, Comparative Literature
Research Interests: Digital Media, Game Studies, Technology, Queer Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Gender Studies, Video Games, Feminism, Digital Humanities
Published Books:
Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019)
Co-editor with John Adrienne Shaw, The Queer Games Avant-Garde (Duke University Press Books, 2020)
Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022)
Co-editor with Johanna Brewer, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud, Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023)
Braxton Soderman
he/him/his
asoderma@uci.edu
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Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies
Ph.D., Brown University, Modern Culture and Media
M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, Writing - Critical Studies
Research Interests: Game Studies, Game History, Digital Media Studies, New Media Aesthetics, Play studies
Published Books:
Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject (The MIT Press, 2021)
Affiliate Faculty
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
he/him/his
Professor of English and Asian American Studies; Director of Center for Critical Korean Studies
Ph.D., UC Berkeley, English
Research Interests: Korean Film, Asian American Studies, Globalization, Political Economy
Published books:
Vicious Circuits: Korea’s IMF Cinema and the End of the American Century (Stanford University Press, 2019)
Racial Things, Racial Forms: Objecthood in Avant-Garde Asian American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2012)
Kyung Hyun Kim
he/him/his
Professor of East Asian Studies
PhD., University of Southern California, Cinema Studies
Research Interests: East Asian cinemas, Korean popular culture, Korean literature, critical theory
Published books:
Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of the Twenty-First Century (Duke University Press, 2021)
Co-editor with Youngmin Choe, The Korean Popular Culture Reader (Duke University Press, 2014)
Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era (Duke University Press, 2011)
The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Duke University Press, 2004)
Jared Sexton
he/him/his
Professor of African American Studies
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, Ethnic Studies
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Race & Sexuality, Coalition Politics, Contemporary U.S. Cinema.
Published Books:
Black Men, Black Feminism: Lucifer's Nocturne (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
Michael Szalay
he/him/his
Professor of English
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, Ethnic Studies
Research Interests: 20th- and 21st-Century American, Critical Theory, Film/TV/New Media.
Published Books:
Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas and the Reinvention of Television (University of Chicago Press, 2023)
Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party (Stanford University Press, 2012)
New Deal Modernism: American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State (Duke University Press, 2000)
Aaron Trammell
he/him/his
Associate Professor of Informatics
Ph.D., Rutgers University, Journalism and Media Studies
Research Interests: Game Studies, Media Studies, American Studies.
Published Books:
Repairing Play: A Black Phenomenology (MIT Press, 2023)
The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race, and Geek Culture (NYU Press, 2023)
Roxanne Varzi
she/her/hers
Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D., Columbia University, Anthropology
Research Interests: Multi-Modal Research Design, Visual Anthropology, Storytelling, Ethnography, Academic and Prose Writing, building creativity and dismantling ideology, Religious Studies and non-linear thinking.
Published Books:
Last Scene Underground: An Ethnographic Novel of Iran (Stanford University Press, 2015)
Warring Souls, Media, Martyrdom and Youth in post-Revolution Iran (Duke University Press, 2006)
Film:
Plastic Flowers Never Die (2008)
Postdoctoral Fellow
DeWitt King
he/him/his
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph.D., University of Minnesota, American Studies
Research Interests: Black Cultural Studies, Black Geographies, Critical Sport Studies, Media Industries, Labor, Race and Technology, and Black Studies.
Lecturers
Liz Cane
she/her/hers
Lecturer
UCLA, M.F.A., Film Directing/Production
Specializations: Narrative and documentary filmmaking, screenwriting, exploring the aging process with an emphasis on successful aging, global warming, social justice
Marie Cartier
she/her/hers
Lecturer
Claremont Graduate University, Ph.D., Religion and MFA, Art: Installation and Painting
UCLA, MFA, Film and TV: Screenwriting and MFA, Theater: Playwriting
Specializations: Screenwriting, LGBTQ+ popular culture, LGBTQ+ Film Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Queer Studies/ History, Religion, Ethnography