PronounsShe/They

Department/College/UnitArts Division

TitleDr.

AffiliationFaculty

Web Sitepersonal

Primary Office LocationCommunications Building
home

Additional Location(s)Oakland, CA

Office HoursBy appt only on zoom

Mail StopFilm and Digital Media

Biography, Education and Training

PhD 2020 University of California, Santa Cruz, Film & Digital Media

MFA 2003 Bard College

BA w/ Honors, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Research Interests

Environmental cinema, LGBTQ+ film/media history, archival & found footage filmmaking, documentary history, experimental film history, film editing, City Symphony and the city on film (urban studies and landscape cinema).

Selected Publications

Book Chapter

“Citizenfour and the Anti-Representational Turn: aesthetics of failure in the information age,” Rethinking Popular Documentary, eds. Christie Milliken and Steve Anderson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021): 220-237.

Articles

“In the Best Interests of the Children: A Case Study of a “Useful” Lesbian Propaganda Film,” Feminist Media Histories 2.2 (Spring 2025), forthcoming. 

“Mothership: Voyage into Afrofuturism at the Oakland Museum of California,” Millenium Film Journal, No. 75 (Spring 2022): 26-33. 

 “Faya Dayi: Escaping into the Cinematic,” Docalogue, August 2022.

“Loving the Lie: Elizabeth Holmes, Thomas Edison, and Alex Gibney,” Film Quarterly (Fall 2020) 74 (1): 64-68.

“Looking Back on Queer Futures,” Open Space Field Notes, SF MoMA, July 22, 2019, https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2019/07/looking-back-on-queer-futures/.

“Valencia/The Movie(s): A New Collectivity,” co-written with Liz Clarke, Camera Obscura 31.3, 2016, Vol 31, No. 3 93, Duke University Press, pp. 165-175.

“The Ethical Implications of Zeros, Circles and Loops,” Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, Vol. 23: Special Issue: Loop Media, Nov. 2016.

“Virtual Female,” SF Camerawork Journal, Fall/Winter 1995, Volume 22, No. 2, 1995, 30-32.

Book Reviews / Conference Proceedings 

“The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars (Book Review)” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 30.1, Spring 2021. 

“Documentary Across Disciplines eds. by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg (review), JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 58.2, Winter 2019.

“Review: Documentary Across Disciplines eds. by Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, Biography, 41, no. 2, (2018):389-392.  

“Symposium Review: Poetics & Politics: Documentary Research Symposium, May 15–17, 2015, UC Santa Cruz, CA,” Journal of Media Practice, 17/1, 2016, 117-118.

Other Publications

“Star,” Sister Spit: Writings, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road, ed. Michelle Tea (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012): 19-20.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, performance text, Brooklyn, NY: Bonsai Emanuel Press, 2010.

“Gum and Tea,” The Journal of Short Film, Volume 10, Winter, 2008.