Mitchell Cobey Lectures on Cinema

The Mitchell Cobey Lectures on Cinema showcase work by some of the most significant figures working on and in American cinema. The lectures combine the work of scholars, curators, and filmmakers, while also emphasizing and highlighting the place of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies within the broader film and public culture of Chicago, and especially of the South Side.

These lectures are made possible by the generous donation from Mitchell Cobey.

22 May 2026

Carla Hayden is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mellon Foundation. She is pursuing scholarship, writing, and research projects while also serving as a strategic partner and counsel, working in collaboration with Foundation leadership and staff, advising on opportunities to support and advance libraries, archives, and other organizations in the public knowledge ecosystem. Dr. Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library, served as the 14th Librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden was president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004. In 1995, she was the first African American to receive Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year Award in recognition of her outreach services at the Pratt Library, which included an after-school center for Baltimore teens offering homework assistance and college and career counseling. Hayden received a B.A. from Roosevelt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago.

"The End"

27 February 2025

Joshua Oppenheimer is an American-born British film director known for his Oscar-nominated films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) and Gold Hugo-winning film The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1997), as well as The Globalisation Tapes (2003) and numerous short documentaries. Oppenheimer was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur fellowship and a 1997 Marshall Scholar. Oppenheimer received his PhD from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, while studying on a Marshall Scholarship. He is Professor of Film at the University of Westminster.

"Film History as Public History: Notes from the Academy Museum"

1 December 2023

Jacqueline Stewart is Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and Director and chair of the National Film Preservation Board, as well as the former director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.  Stewart is host of “Silent Sunday Nights” on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, co-editor (with Jan-Christopher Horak and Allyson Nadia Field) of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema and (with Scott MacDonald) of William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. She is the co-curator (with Jan-Christopher Horak and Allyson Nadia Field) of the L.A. Rebellion Preservation Project at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and (with Charles Musser) of the five-disc set Pioneers of African American Cinema for Kino Lorber.