The Division of Cinema & Media Studies Faculty List
Tara Mcpherson
Professor
Division of Cinema & Media Studies; Media Arts + Practice Division, Ph.D. Advisor
Research areas: Digital Media, Digital Humanities and Publishing, Early Software Histories, Gender Studies
The HMH Foundation Endowed Chair for the Study of Censorship in Media
tmcphers@usc.edu
Kiki Benzon
Associate Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts
Research areas: Interactive Media, Transmedia Entertainment, Digital Culture, Critical Theory, Games Studies, Media Arts and Practice
kbenzon@cinema.usc.edu
Todd Boyd
Professor
Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for Study of Race and Popular Culture
Research areas: African American Cinema, New Hollywood, Hip Hop Culture, Cultural Politics, Sports Media
tboyd@cinema.usc.edu
Vicki Callahan
Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts
Research areas: Film and Media History, Feminist Studies, Digital Culture, Media Strategies for Social Change, and Public Scholarship
vcallahan@cinema.usc.edu
George Carstocea
Visiting Assistant Professor
Research areas: Film Aesthetics, Animation, Comedy, Television and Industry Studies
J.D. Connor
Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts
Director of Graduate Studies
Research areas: Contemporary Hollywood, Studio Economics, Media Industries, Production Design, Comedy
jconnor@cinema.usc.edu
Giancarlo Cornejo
Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
Research areas: Queer Theory, Transgender Media, Latin American Cinema
gcornejo@cinema.usc.edu
Lan Duong
Associate Professor
Research areas: Feminist Film Theory, Postcolonial Literature, Asian American Cinema, Genre Studies
lduong@cinema.usc.edu
Nitin Govil
Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts
Research areas: Global Media, Transnational Hollywood, Asian Media, Media Industries, Comparative Methods, Genre and Star Studies, Science Fiction, Speculative Culture
ngovil@usc.edu
Aniko Imre
Professor of Cinematic Arts
Division of Cinema & Media Studies; Media Arts + Practice Division, PhD Advisor
Research areas: Global media studies, studies of European and (post)socialist media, critical feminist, race and nationalism studies, postcolonial studies, critical data, platform and surveillance studies, media industry studies
imre@usc.edu
Priya Jaikumar
Professor
Chair, Cinema & Media Studies
Research areas: Colonial and Postcolonial Cinemas, Film Theory and Historiography, Spatial Studies, Environmental and Elemental Media, South Asia, Transnational Feminism
pjaikumar@cinema.usc.edu
Henry Jenkins
Provost’s Professor
Media Arts + Practice Division, Ph.D. Advisor
Research areas: New Media Literacies, Transmedia, Fandom, Gaming, Convergence Culture, Civic Media
hjenkins@cinema.usc.edu
Kara Keeling
Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
Research areas: Afrofuturisms and Radical Imaginations, Black and Queer Cultural Politics, Sound and Music Studies, Digital Media
kkeeling@cinema.usc.edu
Akira Mizuta Lippit
University Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Cultures
T.C. Wang Family Endowed Chair in Cinematic Arts and Vice Dean of Faculty, School of Cinematic Arts
Research areas: World Film and Literature, Critical Theory, Japanese Cinema and Culture, Experimental Film, Visual Studies
alippit@cinema.usc.edu
Thomas Pringle
Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
Research Areas: Environmental Media and Ecocinema, Media Theory, Media Archaeology and Historiography, Science and Technology Studies
tpringle@usc.edu
Michael Renov
Vice Dean of Academic Affairs
Haskell Wexler Endowed Chair in Documentary
Research Areas: Documentary Theory, Autobiography in Film and Video, Video Art and Activism, Representations of the Holocaust
renov@usc.edu
Laura Isabel Serna
Associate Professor of History and Cinema and Media Studies
Research areas: Latinx Media, Mexican Cinema and Culture, Hollywood Labor Practices, Audiences, Historiography
lserna@cinema.usc.edu
William Whittington
Assistant Chair
Division of Cinema & Media Studies
bwhittington@cinema.usc.edu
Jennifer Wild
Associate Professor Division of Cinema and Media Studies and Department of French and Italian
Research areas: Historiography, French Film, Avant-garde Media and Experimental Film, Feminist and Political Aesthetics
jjwild@cinema.usc.edu