Cinema and Media Studies graduates are among the leading international experts in their fields. Recent CMS alumni have gained academic positions at prestigious institutions such as the University of Chicago, University of Colorado, Florida-Atlantic University, University of Rochester, Saint Louis University, University of Toronto, SUNY Purchase, UCLA, Queen Mary University: London, and UNC Wilmington among others. Other alumni have taken non-academic positions in universities, archives, the arts, and museums.
Cooper Long - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "John Frankenheimer's Untimely Media"
Position: Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago
Gary Kafer - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "After Ubiquity: Surveillance Media and the Technics of Social Difference"
Position: Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago
Tanya Desai - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "Sitaron Ka Tarana: Acts of Expression in the Bombay Film Song"
Position: Teaching Fellow in the Humanities, Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago
Clint Froehlich - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "Playing with Cinema: The Development of Audio-Visual Style in Video Games"
Position: Lecturer, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
Cinta Peleja - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "The Screen Encounter: Cinematic Experiences of the Self"
Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Pedro Noel Doreste Rodriguez - PhD 2023
Dissertation: "A Cinema of Free Association: Counter-Institutional Film Cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean, 1952–1968"
Position: Assistant Professor in Film Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University
Ritika Kaushik - PhD 2022
Dissertation: "Files Beget Films: State Sponsored Documentary in India, 1960s-1970s"
Position: Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures – Film and Television Studies Department at the University of Warwick
Aurore Spiers - PhD 2022
Dissertation: "Digging for Film History: Women, French Cinema, and Film Historiography, 1927–1978"
Position: Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts at Texas A&M University
Amy Skjerseth - PhD 2022
Dissertation: "Music’s Visual Waves: Popular Music Technology and Audiovisual Aesthetics"
Position: Assistant Professor of Popular Music in the Department of Music at the University of California Riverside
Dave Burnham - PhD 2021
Dissertation: "Viewing the World after Structural Film: Realist Impulses in Experimental Cinema"
Position: Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Nevada, Reno
Matthew Hubbell - PhD 2021
Dissertation: "Acting After the New Wave: The Political Aesthetics of Performance in France, 1968-1981"
Position: Lecturer, University of Minnesota
Katerina Korola - PhD 2021
Dissertation: "How to Photograph the Air: Photography, Cinema, and the Problem of Atmosphere in German Modernism, 1893-1933"
Position: Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies, University of Minnesota
Noa Merkin - PhD 2020
Dissertation: "Little Patch of Yellow: On Detail in Film"
Position: Lecturer, Tel Aviv University
Tyler Schroeder - PhD 2020
Dissertation: "Film in German Public Health 1918-1946: Corporeality, Crisis, Utopia"
Position: Circulation Supervisor, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago
Pao-chen Tang - PhD 2020
Dissertation: "The Animist Imagination in Cinema"
Position: Lecturer (equiv. Assistant Professor) in Film Studies at the University of Sydney
Artemis Willis - PhD 2020
Dissertation: "Performing Pictures: The Magic Lantern C. 1900"
Position: Research Fellow, Open Documentary Lab, MIT
Panpan Yang - PhD 2020
Dissertation: "Animating Space: Toward a Poetics of Chinese Animation"
Position: Lecturer (equiv. Assistant Professor) in Arts and Visual Cultures of Modern China at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
William Carroll - PhD 2019
Dissertation: "The Depths of Flatness and the Voice of Silence: Suzuki Seijun and 1960s Japanese Film Theory"
Position: Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, University of Alberta
Kalisha Cornett - PhD 2019
Dissertation: "Out of the Blur of the Background: Landscape and Experience in the road Film"
Position: Lecturer and Academic Advisor in the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at Northwestern University
Yuqian Yan - PhD 2019
Dissertation: "The Ancient as Enchantment: Cinematic Representation of the Past in Republican China"
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow of Chinese Performance Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis
Chris Carloy - PhD 2018
Dissertation: "True 3D: The Form, Concept, and Experience of Three- Dimensionality in 1990s Videogames"
Position: Assistant Instructional Professor, University of Chicago
Mikki Kressbach - PhD 2018
Dissertation: "Perfect Contagion Machine: Digital Media, Scientific Evidence, and Emergent Outbreaks on Screen"
Position: Assistant Professor of Television and New Media at Loyola Marymount
Nicole Morse - PhD 2018
Dissertation: "Selfie Aesthetics: Form, Performance, and Transfeminist Politics in Self-Representational Art"
Position: Associate Professor of Cinema and New Media at Florida Atlantic University
James Rosenow - PhD 2018
Dissertation: "Forming an American Modernism: The Rise of the Experimental Filmmaker 1927-1939"
Position: Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Rochester
Amy Stebbins - PhD 2018
Dissertation: "Theater Against the Turn: Acting Dialectics of Frank Castorf's Volksbühne"
Emily Capper - PhD 2017
Dissertation: "Allan Kaprow and the Dialectives of Instruction, 1947-1968"
Position: Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Associate Curator at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota
Sabrina Negri - PhD 2017
Dissertation: "Archival Clues: Film, Digital, and the Evidential Paradigm"
Position: Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder
Jordan Schonig - PhD 2017
Dissertation: "Cinema's Motion Forms: Film Theory, the Digital Turn, and the Possibilities of Cinematic Movement"
Position: Assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at Texas Christian University
Ling Zhang - PhD 2017
Dissertation: "Sound Images, Acoustic Culture, and the Transmediality in 1920s-1940s Chinese Cinema"
Position: Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Purchase College, SUNY
Richard Davis - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Wit and Worldplay: The Japanese Wartime Musical Film, 1931-1945"
Position: Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, Duke Kunshan University
Ken Eisenstein - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Dismembering: The Activity of the Archive in Hollis Frampton"
Position: Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University
Hannah Frank - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Looking at Cartoons: The Art, Labor, and Technology of American Cell Animation"
Position: Hannah was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington until her passing in 2017
Zdenko Mandusic - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Camerawork: Soviet Film Experience and Visual Politics After Stalin"
Position: Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto
Mario Slugan - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Fictions, Narrators, and Early Cinema"
Position: Senior Lecturer (equiv. Associate Professor) in Film Studies at Queen Mary University, London
Junko Yamazaki - PhD 2016
Dissertation: "Jidaigeki's Postwar: Visions of the Present in Japanese Period Films"
Position: Assistant Professor of Japanese Cinema and Media at Princeton University
Matt Hauske - PhD 2015
Dissertation: "Cowboy Modernity: Contexts of the Hollywood Western, 1946-1964"
Position: Adjunct Professor at DePaul University
Daniel Johnson - PhD 2015
Dissertation: "Interstitial Dimensions: Anonymity and Asynchronicity in Contemporary Media Culture"
Position: Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies, William and Mary
Ian Bryce Jones - PhD 2015
Dissertation: "Enough of a World: A Phenomenology of Videogame 'Weltlichkeit'"
Position: Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; writer for Ci3 at the University of Chicago
Dong Liang - PhD 2015
Dissertation: "The World Heard: Sound, Film Theory, and the Cinematic Experience"
Position: Instructional Designer/Developer IT Services at Stanford University
Namhee Han - PhD 2014
Dissertation: "Technologies of Anamorphic Vision: Widescreen Cinema and Postwar Modernity in Japan and South Korea"
Position: Assistant Professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at Queens College
Adam Hart - PhD 2014
Dissertation: "A Cinema of Wounded Bodies: Sensational Abjection and the Spaces of Modern Horror"
Position: Curator of the Guerrilla TV Project at the Media Burn Archive
Marianna Martin - PhD 2014
Dissertation: "Reading the Cards: Contemporary Genre Practice and Digital Audiences"
Adrienne Seely - PhD 2014
Dissertation: "Continuous Resonance: Early 1970s Film Aurality and the Technics of Becoming"
Position: Authorities and Slavic Metadata Librarian for the Chicago Public Library
Po-Chen Tsai - PhD 2013
Dissertation: "Singing, Dancing, and the Mass Production of Non-Belonging: Musicals, Melodramas, Migration, and the Transnationalization of Hong Kong Cinema, 1940s to 1960s"
Position: Assistant Professor at National Chiao Tung University.
Colin Williamson - PhD 2013
Dissertation: "Watching Closely with Turn-of-the-Century Eyes: Obscured Histories of Magic, Science, and Animation in the Cinema"
Position: Assistant Professor of American Studies and Cinema Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Nathan Holmes - PhD 2012
Dissertation: "Welcome to Fear City: Crime Film and the Urban Imagination, 1970-1975"
Position: Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Purchase College, SUNY
Michelle Puetz - PhD 2012
Dissertation: "Variable Area: Hearing and Seeing Sound in Structural Cinema: 1966-1978"
Position: Arts Coordinator at Colgate University
Ivan Ross - PhD 2012
Dissertation: "Mediating the Historical Imagination: Visual Media and the U.S. Civil War, 1861-2011"
Position: Media Coordinator at the Duke University Talent Identification Program
Yuki Takinami - PhD 2012
Dissertation: "Reflecting Hollywood: Mobility and LIghtness in Early Silent Films of Ozu Yasujiro, 1927-1933"
Position: Associate Professor of Media Studies at Josai International University
Doron Galili - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television and the Modern Mediascape, 1878-1939"
Position: Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Gothenburg
Andrew Johnston - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Pulses of Abstraction: Episodes from a History of Animation"
Position: Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at North Carolina State University
Diane Wei Lewis - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Moving History: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Film and Mobile Culture in Interwar Japan"
Position: Associate Professor in the Film and Media Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis
Katharina Loew - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Techno-Romanticism: Special Effects in German Fantastic Films of the Silent Era"
Position: Associate Professor of German and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston
Inga Pollman - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Cinematic Life: Vitalism and the Moving Image"
Position: Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Scott Richmond - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Resonant Perception: Cinema, Phenomenology, and the Illusion of Bodily Movement"
Position: Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto
Man Fung Yip - PhD 2011
Dissertation: "Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity: Bodies, Genders and Transnational Imaginaries"
Position: Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma
Laura Lee - PhD 2010
Dissertation: "Cinema of the Interval: Stop-Motion Animation and Japanese Film Aesthetics"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department Modern Languages and Linguistics and the Department of Art History at Florida State University
Christina Petersen - PhD 2010
Dissertation: "Paradise for the Young: Youth Spectatorship in the American Silent Film Era, 1904-1933"
Position: Christian Nielsen Associate Professor of Film Studies at Eckerd College
Ariel Rogers - PhD 2010
Dissertation: "Moving Machines: The Experience of New Technologies from Widescreen to Digital Cinema"
Position: Associate Professor of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University
Caitlin McGrath - PhD 2010
Dissertation: "Captivating Motion: Late-Silent Film Sequences of Modern Urban Perception"
Position: Executive Director of the Old Greenbelt Theater in Greenbelt Maryland.
Lee Carruthers - PhD 2008
Dissertation: "Doing Time: Timeliness and Temporal Rhetorics in Contemporary Cinema"
Position: Associate Professor of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary
Sarah Keller - PhD 2008
Dissertation: "To Fill a Gap: Cinema and Poetry"
Position: Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston
Theresa Scandiffio - PhD 2008
Dissertation: "Better'n Any Circus That Ever Come to Town': Cinema, Visual Culture and Educational Programming at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History 1921-35"
Position: Associate Dean of Animation, Arts, and Design at Sheridan College
Julie Turnock - PhD 2008
Dissertation: "Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Art and Technology in 1970s U.S. Filmmaking"
Position: Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois
Chika Kinoshita - PhD 2007
Dissertation: "Mise-En-Scene of Desire: The Films of Mizoguchi Kenji"
Position: Associate Professor of Film Studies at Kyoto University
Daniel Morgan - PhD 2007
Dissertation: "'A Feeling of Light': Cinema, Aesthetics, and the Films of Jean-Luc Godard at the End of the Twentieth Century"
Position: Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago
Charles Tepperman - PhD 2007
Dissertation: "Communicating a New Form of Knowledge: Tracing the Amatuer Cinema League and Its Films 1926-1954"
Position: Associate Professor and Department Head; Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary
Joshua Yumibe - PhD 2007
Dissertation: "Moving Color: Aesthetic History of Applied Color Technologies in Silent Cinema"
Position: Professor and Director of Film Studies at Michigan State University.
Kaveh Askari - PhD 2005
Dissertation: "Moving Pictures before Motion Pictures: The Pictorial Tradition and American Media Aesthetics, 1890-1920"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University
Weihong Bao - PhD 2005
Dissertation: "Baptism by Fire: Spectatorship and Aesthetic Affect In Chinese Cinema from Shanghai to Chongqing"
Position: Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
Oliver Gaycken - PhD 2005 (English)
Dissertation: "Devices of Curiosity: Cinema in the Field of Scientific Visuality"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland
Allison Whitney - PhD 2005
Dissertation: "The Eye of Daedalus: A History and Theory of IMAX Cinema"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of English at Texas Tech University
Before the Department of Cinema and Media Studies was founded in 1999, the following film-related dissertations were produced in other departments within the University of Chicago:
Terri Francis - PhD 2004 (English)
Dissertation: "Josephine Baker's Museum: Black Dance, French Cinema, Harlem Renaissance"
Position: Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami
Ora Gelley - PhD 2003 (English)
Position: Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Sharon Hayashi - PhD 2003 (History)
Dissertation: "Traveling Film History: Language and Landscape in Japanese Cinema, 1931-1945"
Position: Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Arts at York University
Jean Ma - PhD 2003 (English)
Dissertation: "Time without Measure, Sadness without Cure: Hou Hsiao-hsien's Films of History"
Position: Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University
Robert Spadoni - PhD 2003 (English)
Dissertation: "The Uncanny of Early Sound Film: Classic Horror Cinema and the Return of the Medium-Sensitive Viewer"
Position: Armington Associate Professor of Film at Case Western Reserve University
Paula Amad - PhD 2002 (English)
Dissertation: "Archiving the Everyday: A Topos in French Film History, 1885-1931"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa
Jennifer Peterson - PhD 1999 (English)
Dissertation: "World Pictures: Travelogues and the Lure of the Exotic, 1896-1920"
Position: Professor of Media Studies at Woodbury University
Jacqueline Stewart - PhD 1999 (English)
Dissertation: "Migrating to the Movies: The Emergence of Black Urban Film Culture"
Position: Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and Director and President of the Academy Museum
Arthur Knight - PhD 1998 (English)
Dissertation: "African-American Musical Performance and the Hollywood Musical"
Position: Professor of English and Film Studies at the College of William and Mary
Adam Lowenstein - PhD 1998 (English)
Dissertation: "Shock Waves: Trauma, History, and Art in the Modern Horror Film"
Position: Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh
Hank Sartin - PhD 1998 (English)
Dissertation: "Drawing on Hollywood: Warner Bros. Cartoons and Hollywood, 1930-1950"
Position: Senior Editor at The Rotarian Magazine
Zhen Zhang - PhD 1998 (East Asian Lang. and Civ.)
Dissertation: "An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Film Culture, Urban Modernity, and the Vernacular Experience in China, 1896-1937"
Position: Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, Director of Asian Film & Media Initiative at New York University
Sabine Haenni - PhD 1997 (English)
Dissertation: "The Immigrant Scene: The Commercialization of Ethnicity and the Production of Publics in Fiction, Theater, and the Cinema, 1890-1915"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University
Paul Young - PhD 1998 (English)
Dissertation: "Virtual Fantasies, Public Realities: American Cinema and the Rival Media, 1895-1995"
Position: Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College
Pamela Robertson Wojcik - PhD 1993 (English)
Dissertation: "Guilty Pleasures: Camp and the Female Spectator"
Position: Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theater at the University of Notre Dame