University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies

We’re so proud of our graduating students who completed thesis films this year! You can watch all the projects June 18-July 31 via the 📽🎞

The Digital Media Workshop will be hosting Christine Goding-Doty and Tara McPherson on May 24 for a panel about White Supremacy, Affect, and Digital Culture, moderated by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. Register here: https://uchicago.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kvzzkvK3Q9uCc45x-v_8Nw

Christine Goding Doty, Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges – Christine Goding-Doty is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Previously, she was an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for the Humanities and the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she was a member of the 2018-2020 cohort of Mellon Fellows convened around the theme "Truth, Fact, and Ways of Knowing." Dr. Goding-Doty received her PhD in African American Studies from Northwestern University in 2018. In the course of her study she also spent three years in cotutelle at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Tara McPherson, Professor and Chair, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Southern California – Tara McPherson is Chair and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Studies. She is a core faculty member of the IMAP program, USC’s innovative practice based-Ph.D., and also an affiliated faculty member in the American Studies and Ethnicity Department. Her research engages the cultural dimensions of media, including the intersection of gender, race, affect and place. She has a particular interest in digital media. Here, her research focuses on the digital humanities, early software histories, gender, and race, as well as upon the development of new tools and paradigms for digital publishing, learning, and authorship.

Moderated by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Simon Fraser University – Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University, and leads the Digital Democracies Institute which was launched in 2019. The Institute aims to integrate research in the humanities and data sciences to address questions of equality and social justice in order to combat the proliferation of online “echo chambers,” abusive language, discriminatory algorithms and mis/disinformation by fostering critical and creative user practices and alternative paradigms for connection. It has four distinct research streams all led by Dr. Chun: Beyond Verification which looks at authenticity and the spread of disinformation; From Hate to Agonism, focusing on fostering democratic exchange online; Desegregating Network Neighbourhoods, combatting homophily across platforms; and Discriminating Data: Neighbourhoods, Individuals and Proxies, investigating the centrality of race, gender, class and sexuality to big data and network analytics.

Co-sponsored by the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies Working Group, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and the Department of Cinema & Media Studies

The department's very own Professor Jacqueline Stewart is making history as TCM's first black host!

Turner Classic Movies’ First Black Host on Keeping Old Films Alive With the addition of Jacqueline Stewart to its roster, the old movie network makes a notable hire.

Learn more about lecturer Marc Downie and his work with Natasha Barrett in this article from the New York Times!

Tickling the Ear With Sounds That Are Almost Tangible Listen to pieces by Natasha Barrett, one of the leading composers in the emerging field of 3D audio.

Associate Professor Allyson Nadia Field speaks with the Chicago Tribune about the link between minstrelsy and early American cinema.

How America’s earliest films were based in minstrelsy Allyson Nadia Field, a film scholar at the University of Chicago, was one of the experts last fall who was able to trace the Chicago origins of "Something Good-Negro Kiss," a recently discovered film clip depicting an early onscreen kiss between two African-Americans, likely shot in 1898.

Associate Professor Allyson Nadia Field honored as a Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Academy honors UChicago scholar who identified historic on-screen kiss Academy honors UChicago scholar who identified historic on-screen kiss