I design and teach courses in media history, visual studies, and corporate culture at the undergraduate and graduate level at Baruch College, The City University of New York and in the doctoral program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Cultural Theory and Documentary Film (Graduate)

Cultural Theory and the Documentary explores documentary cinema through the lens of cultural theory, in its most inclusive sense. We consider how nonfiction films circulate within and across historical, social, and cultural networks and trouble identities and cultural imaginings.

The Ethics of Image Making (Undergraduate)

Image making of all kinds is bound up with questions of ethics. Who has the right to represent other people’s lives? What are the ethical stakes involved in digital manipulation? What are the consequences of tackling sensitive social and political issues through the lens of nonfiction photography, filmmaking, digital media, and VR?

American Television Programming (Undergraduate)

This course examines the socio-economic and cultural history of US television programming, beginning with TV’s debt to radio and programming developments during the 1950s “Golden Age” of live television drama. Shifts in the styles, platform and cultural reception of American television in the succeeding decades will culminate in a critical analysis of what streaming means for the future of television.

Spectacular Realities: Spectator & Immersion in Film and Related Arts (Graduate)

This course offers a genealogical study of spectacular realities, experiences, artifacts, and devices designed to immerse the spectator in an elsewhere. Drawing upon theories of visuality and cultural history, the course encourages students to make intellectual speculations across old and new media, to imagine the future of immersive experiences by looking at the past.

Corporate Representation in Film, Television, Advertising, and Social Media (Graduate)

This course critically explores how corporations and the people who work in them have been represented in film, television, advertising, and digital media and what corporate communication specialists can learn from this rich visual history. It pays specific attention to questions of diversity and inclusion and whether media industries have lagged behind or been instrumental in advocating for change.

Corporate Advertising and Image Identity (Graduate)

Few would disagree with the assertion that the image is everything when it comes to corporate identity, defining the brand, marketing campaigns, and stakeholder attitudes. This course explores how corporations construct their identities and what it takes to sustain a compelling and socially relevant image over time and across geographical boundaries, adopting an eclectic, interdisciplinary approach to the subject.

New Worlds From the Margins: Travel, Identity, and Vernacular Media (Upcoming)

This seminar explores lost or suppressed traces of marginalized identities in an eclectic range of visual works, focusing on historical sites of Indigenous visual and media practice that have been neglected within traditional histories of visual studies, film studies, travel theory, and new media studies.

Film History 1 (Undergraduate)

Beginning with an examination of visual modes of display and devices that predate cinema, the course traces the development of film from 1894 through to the early 1940s, examining the rise of Hollywood, early African American filmmakers, and other major national cinemas. How did cinema become one of the most important and popular art forms of the twentieth century?

Film History 2 (Undergraduate)

This undergraduate seminar explores major developments in US and global film culture since the Second World War. Topics addressed include the problem of film authorship, the development of film genres and aesthetic styles, and the relationship of the classical Hollywood studio system to alternative models of film production in the United States and globally.