Graduate Studies Division
PhD candidate
Graduate
Faculty
Institute of the Arts and Sciences
Feminist Studies Department
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Communications Building
by appointment
Film and Digital Media
ksenia fir (she/xe) is a Ph.D. candidate in Film & Digital Media with designated emphases in Feminist Studies and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and a Visualizing Abolition graduate student researcher. Her research and creative practice focus on science fiction, popular culture, labor, and abolition. ksenia graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Cinema, concentration in screenwriting, from San Francisco State University, where she was a recipient of Achievement Awards for Special Recognition as Department Honoree and for Academic Excellence. Xe received xir M.A. in Film and Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. ksenia's film projects have screened at multiple festivals and won several awards, and her scholarly work has been published in Art Journal, Studies in the Fantastic, The Fantastika Journal, and Vector. ksenia's dissertation, Robocops and Prison Spaceships: Carceral Futurism and Abolitionist Potentialities in Science Fiction Film and Television, traces the historical development of science fiction media representations of what she terms carceral futurism, such as technologically augmented policing and extraplanetary prisons, and offers critical-creative interventions that aim to visualize abolitionist futurities within the realm of cinematic science fictional storytelling.
Graduate students at UC Santa Cruz face a severe rent burden, often spending over 50% of our income on housing. I am in solidarity with the COLA campaign.
Education:
2021 M.A., Film and Digital Media, UC Santa Cruz
2018 B.A., Cinema, focus on screenwriting, summa cum laude, San Francisco State University
Science Fiction, Screenwriting, Popular Culture, Critical Cultural Theory, Fan and Audience Studies, Film/TV Genres, Film/TV History, Visual Criminology, Abolition, Marxist Theory, Labor, Media Representation, Worldbuilding, Transmedia, Feminist STS, Media Activism, Digital Platforms, Games as Media, Futurism, Soviet Fantastika, Feminist Posthumanism, Critical Pedagogy
Selected Awards and Fellowships:
Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz, 2019-2024
PhD Qualifying Exam, Passed with Honors, 2022
Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (SSRC-DPD), UC Santa Cruz, 2021
Achievement Award for Special Recognition as Department Honoree, School of Cinema, San Francisco State University, 2018
Achievement Award for Academic Excellence, School of Cinema, San Francisco State University, 2018
2023 “Breaking Out of the Known.” Review of Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (EditMolnár, Marcel Schwierin, eds.). Art Journal, vol. 82, issue 3: 77-80.
2023 “Transing Science Fiction: Border Hacking and Queer Utopias of Sense8 and Transfinite.” Fantastika Journal, vol. 2, issue 2, special issue on Queering Fantastika: 14-27.
2021 “‘Harvested by Machine’: Science Fiction and Labor in Outer Space.” Vector, vol. 294, special issue on SFF and Class: 19-28.
2021 “Clean Slates, Marked Bodies: Dollhouse, the [Re-]Programming of the Mind,and the Gendered Labor of a Cyborg.” Studies in the Fantastic, vol. 10, issue 1: 1-19.
