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
Professor
Vice Dean of Faculty
Research areas: World Cinemas, Critical Theory, Japanese Cinema and Culture, Experimental Film, Adaptation, 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