top of page
 
KEYNOTE PRESENTERS

​

Kristopher Fallon, Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis

Kristopher Fallon is a film and digital media scholar whose research focuses on non-fiction visual culture across a range of platforms, from still photography to data visualization. His essays on digital technology and documentary have recently appeared in Film Quarterly and Screen, and are forthcoming in several edited anthologies. Before coming to Davis, he played an active role in the early stages of both the Berkeley Center for New Media and the CITRIS Data & Democracy Initiative at UC Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. He is currently working on a book entitled Where Truth Lies: Digital Culture and Documentary Film After 9/11.

​
Jenny Odell, Digital Media Artist

Jenny Odell a Bay Area native/captive. Her work combines the mining of online imagery with writing and research, usually in an attempt to highlight the material nature of our modern networked existence. Her practice involves collecting, tagging and cataloguing, and is often compared to a natural scientist—specifically, a lepidopterist. Her work has made its way into the Google Headquarters, Les Rencontres D'Arles, Arts Santa Monica, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, La Gaîté lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), the Made in NY Media Center, Apexart (NY), and East Wing (Dubai). It's also turned up in TIME Magazine's LightBox, The Atlantic, The Economist, WIRED, the NPR Picture Show, PBS News Hour, and a couple of Gestalten books. She teachs internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford.

​
CLOSING REMARKS

​

Weihong Bao, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Weihong Bao, associate professor, works in the areas of film theory and history, media archaeology, and critical theory. Her teaching and research interests cover late nineteenth century visual and performance culture, Chinese language cinema of all periods and regions, historical screen and exhibition practice as well as transnational genre cinema, comparative media history and theory, and the intersection between film and media.

She is the author of Fiery Films: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945 (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Her writings appear in such journals as Camera Obscura, New German Critique, Nineteenth Century Theater and Film, Opera Quarterly, The Journal of Chinese Cinemas, The Journal of Modern Chinese Literature,American Anthropologist, and Yingshi wenhua as well as The Blackwell Companion to Chinese Cinema.

​

She has held fellowships from UC Berkeley, Harvard University, and the Getty Research Institute. Most recently, she was a senior fellow at the Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM), Germany as well as a Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She serves on the editorial board for Feminist Media History and is co-editor for the “film theory in media history” book series published by Amsterdam University Press.

​

She is currently working on a few research projects, including the geopolitics of film theory, the historical interaction between cinema and theater, and cultural constructions of secrecy as media theory and history. She taught at Ohio State University and Columbia University before joining UC Berkeley. 

​
PRESENTERS

 

Shaikha Almubaraki, University of California, Berkeley

Shaikha Almubaraki is a PhD Student in the Architecture Department at the University of California at Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Film and Media studies. She is specialized in the History of Architecture and Urbanisms in the Arab World from the 19th-21st century working on a dissertation that focused on the notion of the ‘Arab’ House and its Context in physical reality and visual/textual representations. She received an MS degree in Advance Architectural Design and a second degree in Advanced Architectural Research both from the University of Columbia and completed her bachelor degree in Architecture at Kuwait University.

 

Tekla Babyak, Independent Scholar

Tekla Babyak received her PhD in musicology from Cornell University in 2014, supported by a Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship. Her dissertation, “Debussy, Nietzsche, and the Shadow of Wagner” explores the ways in which Nietzsche’s critique of Wagner shaped French musical culture. She has presented her work at many conferences, including “Dante and Music” at UPenn and “Translation Theory Today” at CUNY.  As an independent scholar who suffers from multiple sclerosis, she is an advocate for the visibility of chronically ill scholars in academia.

 

Jake Bohrod, University of Southern California

Jake Bohrod is a PhD student of Cinema and Media Studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. His dissertation examines the theoretical implications of virtual reality documentary and the politics of interactivity within contemporary society. His areas of interest include interactive and new media, media praxis, and documentary rhetoric.

 

Harry Burson, University of California, Berkeley

Harry Burson is a PhD student in Film & Media at UC Berkeley interested in film sound technology and aesthetics.

 

Swagato Chakravorty, Yale University

Swagato Chakravorty is a PhD student in History of Art and Film and Media Studies (combined) at Yale University. He works at the interstices of screen practices, screen architectures, and embodied spectatorial experience. Related interests include media aesthetics and the philosophy of art; institutional critique; transnational histories of film theory; early cinema; modernism, modernity, and the moving image; contemporary media theory; space, architecture and (expanded) cinema. For 2015–16, he is the Mellon Museum Research Consortium Fellow in the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art (NY). In 2015, his essay “Screen Architectures and (Expanded) Screen Practices: Space, Movement, Spectatorship” received an Honorable Mention from DOMITOR: the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema.

 
Christina Corfield, University of California, Santa Cruz

Christina Corfield is a current PhD candidate in the department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California Santa Cruz, and current Managing Editor of the online journal Feminist Media Histories. Her work deals with modes of popular cultural production and their methods of representing history, specifically focusing on the discourses raised by the role of technology in their spectatorship. Christina is a practicing video artist and has exhibited her work throughout Europe and the US. She has been nominated for the prestigious SFMOMA SECA award.

 

Kaitlin C. Forcier, University of California, Berkeley

Kaitlin Clifton Forcier is a graduate student in the department of Film and Media at UC Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in New Media. Her areas of interest include: media and embodiment, theories of perception, new media forms, temporality, rhythm, and digital media. Her current research examines the loop as a form in moving image culture at moments of emergence.

​

Stathis Gerostathopoulos, University of California, Berkeley

Stathis is a doctoral student in the department of Architecture at UC Berkeley studying modern and contemporary urban history and theory with a focus on the discourse of difference within the built environment. A tentative dissertation subject looks at queer place-making strategies, their material manifestations, and cultural exchanges between California and Mexico. Trained in Art History and Theater Studies, Stathis holds a Masters of Architecture from UC Berkeley and has practiced architecture before returning to research.

 

Daniel Grinberg, University of California, Santa Barbara

Daniel Grinberg is a PhD student in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation reconsiders histories of War on Terror security practices and surveillance technologies through the lens of the Freedom of Information Act. His scholarship also frequently addresses issues around documentary, media and the environment, and media activism. His writing has appeared in publications such as InMedia, Media Fields Journal, and Studies in Documentary Film, and is forthcoming in journals such as Jump Cut, Mediascape, and Spectator.

 

Megan Hoetger, University of California, Berkeley

Megan Hoetger is a PhD candidate in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley with designated emphases in Film and Critical Theory. With a background in Painting (BFA), Art History (BA, MA) and Curatorial Studies (MA), Hoetger brings to her research on the transnational movement of experimental time-based art an interdisciplinary scope that employs histories and theories of theatre, film, and visual art to examine the production of event spaces for and the performances of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Her criticism has been included in e-misférica, Performance Research, and XTRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly Journal, among elsewhere. In addition to her research and writing, Hoetger is also an active event organizer and programmer. From 2014-16 she co-ran working groups on contemporary art and sound studies on the campus of UC Berkeley, and has coordinated numerous events, including lectures, panel discussions, performances, and film screenings, in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

 

Mikki Kressbach, University of Chicago

Mikki Kressbach is a PhD candidate in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation entitled, “Perfect Contagion Machine,” explores the representation of emergent infectious disease in contemporary film, television and video games, with a focus on the relationship between scientific technologies, protocols, and visual media forms.

 

Jasper Lauderdale, New York University

Jasper Lauderdale is a doctoral student in cinema studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He holds an MA (Honors) in Film Studies and International Relations from the University of St Andrews and an MA in Cinema Studies from Tisch. His film work has shown at the 56th Venice Biennale, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and, of course, online.

 

Daryl Meador, Independent Scholar

Daryl Meador (www.darylmeador.com) is a multimedia artist and researcher originally from Texas, based currently in New York City with an MA in Media Studies from the New School. Her research and practice interests include film theory, affect, geography, mobility and bicycling. Her work has been screened at NYU’s Postman Graduate Conference as well as the Radical Film Festival In Glasgow. She has a chapter published in the forthcoming edited volume Bicycle Equity, Justice for All? projected publication July 2016, Routledge Press. Her thesis project, Heroica Matamoros: Affect, Film and Bicycling on the US-Mexico Border, won the distinguished thesis award in 2016 from The New School, School of Media Studies.

 

Tyler Morgenstern, University of California, Santa Barbara

Tyler Morgenstern is a PhD student in Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and a Doctoral Fellow of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His work is concerned with how particular media technologies and representational modalities contribute to the production of differential racializations in settler states.

 

Nicole Erin Morse, University of Chicago

Nicole Erin Morse works on questions about gender, image, and self-representation, particularly issues at the intersection of new media studies and transgender studies. Their research has been published in Porn Studies and Feminist Media Studies.

 

Bhargavi Narayanan, University of California, Santa Barbara

Bhargavi Narayanan is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. She has an MA in Media and Culture Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, India. Her dissertation rethinks the process of mediation using ephemeral infrastructures that emerge around particular media events as apertures to understanding media publics.

 

Eldon Pei, Stanford University

Eldon Pei is a sixth-year PhD student in the Cinema and Media Studies program at Stanford University’s Department of Art and Art History. Their dissertation, “Alpinists and A-Bombs, Rebels and Reformatories,” looks at the convergence of mass media and mass politics in Mao-era China through the optic of Chinese documentary cinema from the 1950s and 60s. Their academic work has received support from a Hume Graduate Fellowship in the Arts, a Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Sciences, and a Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Pei is a contributor to the forthcoming Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, a peer reviewer for Public Culture and was an organizer of the 2014 Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities. Prior to Stanford, Pei obtained an MA in Asian contemporary art from the Sotheby’s Institute/University of Manchester (2010) and a BA in English and American Literature with Honors in Literary Arts from Brown University (1998).

 

Zeke Saber, University of Southern California

Zeke Saber is an MA candidate in the department of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California. At USC, he acts as a graduate teaching assistant while focusing his research on, among other topics, medium specificity and representations of mental illness across media. His work has been published in Cinephile and Film & History (forthcoming).

 
Emily Saidel, University of Michigan

Emily Saidel is a doctoral student in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. She focuses on media industries, paratextual studies, genre and narrative. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree from New York University.

 

Staci Stutsman, Syracuse University

Staci Stutsman is a PhD Candidate at Syracuse University. She is currently working on her dissertation and residing with her partner in Oakland, CA. Her dissertation uses a methodology of performance studies to theorize the unruliness of women in film and television melodrama. She has taught classes in new media, film, television, popular culture, and nonfiction across media. She has published work in Transformative Works and Culture and has an essay forthcoming in Journal of Film and Video.

 

Michael Anthony Turcios, University of Southern California

Michael Anthony Turcios is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. Turcios’ research areas explore the urban cultural works of Los Angeles, California and Paris, France that address migration, militarization, and “third” borders. Currently, Turcios is also entertaining the question on the representation of urban displacement, which informs his anti-gentrification activism.

 

Lida Zeitlin Wu, University of California, Berkeley

Lida Zeitlin Wu is currently working on her PhD at UC Berkeley in Comparative Literature with a Designated Emphasis in Film & Media. As such, her research situates itself at the intersection of media studies and literary criticism, where she explores topics such as color, graphic narratives, fan studies, and broader issues surrounding word and image. The article on which her presentation is based, "Transmedia Adaptation, or the Kinesthetics of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World," was recently published in the peer-reviewed Oxford Journal Adaptation.

 

Xinyi Zhao, Columbia University

Xinyi Zhao is a second year MA student in Film and Media Studies at Columbia University. She received a dual-BA in Japanese and Economics from Shanghai International Studies University (2012) as well as an MA in Chinese Studies from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2014). Prior to joining Columbia’s MA program in the fall of 2015, she spent half a year at Waseda University (Tokyo) as an exchange student. Xinyi is currently working on her MA Thesis focusing on Manchuria Motion Picture Association (Man’ei). Outside of her field of specialty, she is actively involved in the Women Film Pioneers Project, a research project featuring silent-

era female filmmakers.

​
ORGANIZERS

​

Jennifer Blaylock, University of California, Berkeley

Jennifer Blaylock is a PhD candidate in Film & Media. Her research interests include the intersection of film theory and history, post-colonial and African studies, and theories of new media and technology. Her dissertation, “Spectacularly Mobile: Transnational Narratives of New Media,” explores the history of new media rhetoric as it moves between the United States, Europe, and West Africa at key moments of technology and political change from the 1940s to the present. Jennifer holds an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University and a BA in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley.

​

Alex Bush, University of California, Berkeley

Alex Bush is a PhD candidate in Film & Media. Her dissertation, "Cold Storage: A Media History of the Glacier" (working title), examines the role played by visual media in the historical conceptualization of nature. In 2015, she co-organized the Third International Berkeley Conference on Film & Media with Renée Pastel and Linda Williams. She also worked as chief translator for the sourcebook The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907-1933, edited by Anton Kaes, Michael Cowan, and Nicholas Baer, for the University of California Press. She holds a MA in Critical Studies from the University of Southern California, and an AB in Literature from Harvard University. 

​

Lisa Jacobson, University of California, Berkeley

Lisa W. Jacobson is a PhD candidate in Film & Media working on contemporary American and German film and television. Her dissertation focuses on recent American and German historical television melodramas and the shifting historiographic role of broadcast/post-broadcast television. She received an MA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley, as well as an MA (Research) in Art & Literature from Leiden University in the Netherlands and a BA from Brown University.

​
bottom of page