Core Faculty

 

Catherine Benamou

Professor of Film and Media Studies

cbenamou@uci.edu

Interests: Hispanophone and Lusophone Cinema and Television, U.S. Latinx Media, Orson Welles and Maverick Cinema, Transnational Practices, Spectatorship, Cinematic Memory and Cultures of Preservation

Ph.D., New York University, Cinema Studies

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

 

Desha Dauchan

Associate Professor 

ddauchan@uci.edu

Interests: Media and Activism, African American Film, African Diaspora Cinema, Screenwriting & Film Production

M.F.A., UCLA, Direction/Production

 

 

Sohail Daulatzai

Professor of Film and Media Studies

sdaulatz@uci.edu

Interests: African American studies, Postcolonial Theory, Race, Hip Hop, Muslim Diasporas

Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinematic Arts

Published Books:

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)

 

Arcelia Gutierrez

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies

arceliag@uci.edu

Interests: Latinx Media Studies, Media Activism, Media Policy, Industry Studies

Ph.D., University of Michigan, Romance Languages & Literatures

 

 

Bambi Haggins

Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies

bhaggins@uci.edu

Interests: Black African-American Comedy in Film, Television History, Digital Media and Performance, Comedy as Social and Political Discourse, African American Studies, American Studies

Ph.D., UCLA, Film & Television

Published Books:

Laughing Mad (Rutgers University Press, 2007)

U.S. Television and Cultural Studies (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2009)

 

Kristen Hatch

Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor for Film and Media Studies  

khatch@uci.edu 

Interests: Classical Hollywood, American Film History, Histories of Race, Gender and Sexuality, Stardom, Childhood and Girlhood Studies

Ph.D., UCLA, Film, Television, and Digital Media

Published Books:

Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood (Rutgers University Press, 2015)

 

Lucas Hilderbrand

Department Chair and Professor of Film and Media Studies

lucas.h@uci.edu

Interests: Queer Cultures and Media, Pornography, Cultural Studies, Documentary, Media Infrastructures, Popular Music, Histories of Technology

Ph.D., New York University, Cinema Studies

Published Books:

Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (Duke University Press Books, 2009) 

Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film Classic (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013)

 

Victoria E. Johnson

Professor of Film and Media Studies

v.e.johnson@uci.edu

Interests: Television, Critical Race Theory, Sound, Media Policy, Sports Media

Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinema-Television

Published Books:

Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity (NYU Press, 2008)

Sports TV (Routledge, 2021)

 

Meryem Kamil

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies

mkamil@uci.edu

Interests: New Media Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Palestine/Palestinian Social Movements, Ethnic Studies, American Studies

Ph.D., University of Michigan, American Culture

Published Books:

Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths Press, 2020)

 

Peter Krapp

Professor of Film and Media Studies; English; Informatics; Music

krapp@uci.edu

Interests: Secret Communications and Cybernetics (Cryptologic History), Cultural Memory and Media History (Games and Simulations, History of Computing), Aesthetic Communication (Title Design, Film Music)

Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara, German & Comparative Literature

Published Books:

Medium Cool (Duke University Press Books, 2002)

Deja Vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory (University of Minnesota Press, 2004)

Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 (The MIT Press, 2011)

Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture (Electronic Mediations) (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Sprache - Kultur - Kommunikation/ Language - Culture - Communication (De Gruyter Mouton, 2016)

 

Keiji Kunigami

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies

akunigam@uci.edu

Interests: Brazilian Cinema, Japanese Cinema, Critical Race Theory, Film and Media Theory, Critical Theory, Silent Cinema, Decoloniality, Cinematic Embodiment, Asian-Latin American Studies

Ph.D., Cornell University, Asian Studies

 

Catherine Liu

Professor of Film and Media Studies and Comparative Literature

catherine.liu@uci.edu

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

Ph.D., CUNY Graduate Center, French

Published Books:

Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton (University of Minnesota Press, 2000)

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

Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies

gmimura@uci.edu

Interests: Third Cinema; Asian American Film and Media; Native American and Indigenous Film and Media; the Western and Martial Arts Genres; Animals and Representation

Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz, History of Consciousness

Published Books:

Ghostlife of Third Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)

 

Philana Payton

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies

paytonp@uci.edu

Interests: Black Film and Television History, Black Popular Culture, Performance Studies, Classical Hollywood, Stardom, Women and Gender Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies

Ph.D., University of Southern California, Cinema and Media Studies

 

Allison Perlman

Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Profesor of Film and Media 

aperlman@uci.edu

Interests: TV Studies, Media Policy and Law, Media Activism, Popular Memory, Public Media, Media History

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, American Studies

Published Books:

Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles over U.S. Television (Rutgers University Press, 2016)

 

Fatimah Tobing Rony

Professor of Film and Media Studies

fatimah@uci.edu

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

Ph.D., Yale University, History of Art, M.F.A., UCLA, Directing/Production

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)

 

Bo Ruberg

Professor of Film and Media Studies

bruberg@uci.edu

Interests: Digital Media, Game Studies, Technology, Queer Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Gender Studies, Video Games, Feminism, Digital Humanities

Ph.D., UC Berkeley, Comparative Literature

Published Books: 

Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019)

The Queer Games Avant-Garde (Duke University Press Books, 2020)

Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022)

 

Braxton Soderman

Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies

asoderma@uci.edu

Interests: Game Studies, Game History, Digital Media Studies, New Media Aesthetics

Ph.D., Brown University, Modern Culture and Media, M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, Writing - Critical Studies

Published Books:

Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject (The MIT Press, 2021)