Degrees

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

Research

My research focuses on histories and theories of experimental cinema, with an emphasis on the 1960s film culture, the New American Cinema. I am currently completing a book on the politics of intimacy in the films and critical writings of artists affiliated with this film culture. I have published essays related to this subject in World Records (Fall 2020), 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).  A related essay on the subject of expanded cinema is forthcoming in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.

Since 2009, I have also pursued film curating and programming as research practices and forms of cultural production. 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 in Western Massachusetts, such as 10Forward, A.P.E. Gallery, Studio4, and Amherst Cinema. 

On occasion, my research also manifests in films that explore the material, aesthetic, and ideological dimensions of the 16mm camera roll. My films Rock Roll (2015), Arcadia Rolls I + II (2017), and Circumambulations (2018, co-directed with Andrew Ranville, original score by Roarke Menzies) have been exhibited at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Light Field, Onion City Film and Video Festival, A Good Night's Sleep, the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Microscope Gallery, Revolutions Per Minute Festival, Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival, Montague Common Hall, and other venues.

Teaching

I teach courses in film and media studies that range from introductory surveys of topics in the field to upper-level seminars based on my research. At Amherst, my seminars have included “Curating Film and Video,” “American Avant-Garde Cinema,” “Andy Warhol, Filmmaker,” “Intimate Film Cultures,” “Eco-Media,” “Cinematic Worlds,” “Post-WWII American Cinema,” and “Conversations with Experimental Filmmakers.” All of my courses revolve around scholarship and artists' writings on film and media, but they also 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

“Projection Instructions and the Distribution of Expanded Cinema," Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 64:1, forthcoming November 2024.

“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.