Degrees

2015 Ph.D., Brown University, Modern Culture and Media
2007 M.A., Brown University, Modern Culture and Media
2004 B.A., Michigan State University, English

Research

My research focuses on histories and theories of experimental cinema, with an emphasis on the 1960s experimental film culture, the New American Cinema. I have published essays related to this subject in the online journal World Records, Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 (John Libbey, 2015), and The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision: Media, Counterculture, Revolt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Additional publications of mine have appeared in the online journal Flow, Millennium Film Journal, and Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline (Routledge, 2012).

Since 2009, I have also pursued film curating and programming as research practices. Programs that I curated, co-curated, or compiled have screened at Microscope Gallery, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, UnionDocs: Center for Documentary Art, Le Petit Versailles, Balagan, McGill University, the University of Toronto, and other venues. Between 2015-2019, I produced a series of curated programs at Amherst College that screened on campus and at local venues such as 10Forward, A.P.E. Gallery, Studio4, and Amherst Cinema. In 2019, I co-curated -- with Toby Lee -- an event series on world-making and documentary media that occurred at UnionDocs and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, which was produced in conjunction with World Records.

Teaching

I teach courses in film and media studies that range from introductory surveys to upper-level seminars based on my research. At Amherst, my seminars have included “American Avant-Garde Cinema,” “Film and Video Curation,” “Andy Warhol, Filmmaker,” “Intimate Film Cultures,” “Conversations with Experimental Filmmakers,” and "Postwar American Cinema, 1945-1960." All of my courses revolve around critical, theoretical, and scholarly writing on film and media, but draw from other discourses such as cultural studies and critical theory. Students in my courses explore different forms of writing about cinema and often work on integrated projects that combine critical analysis with creative expression. Many of my courses involve screenings at local cultural institutions and in-class visits by guest filmmakers, curators, or scholars who present students with outside perspectives on a given subject of inquiry.

Selected Publications

“One Hundred and One Sinkholes: Notes on the Film Loop,” Flow 23:2, Special Issue on Loop Media, October 2016.

“In All Directions: An Interview with Fern Silva,” Millennium Film Journal, No. 63, Fall 2015.

“Against Transparency: Jonas Mekas, Vernon Zimmerman, and the West Coast Contribution to the New American Cinema,” Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, ed. David E. James, 2015, John Libbey.

“Turning Inwards: the Politics of Privacy in the New American Cinema,” Sounds and Visions: Music, Counterculture, and the Global 1968, eds. Timothy S. Brown and Andrew E. Lison, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

“Baudrillard, Obscenity, and the Intimate Cinema of Saul Levine,” Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, ed. James Elkins, et al, Routledge, 2012.