Screen Arts & Cultures Ph.D. Graduate Students

and SAC Certificate Students:

  SAC Ph.D. Students

Kristy Rawson (2006) Prior to her studies in Screen Arts, Kristy's background was in art, art history and visual culture.  Her research interests include Latinos in Hollywood, Mexican visual culture, and the cultural exchange between US and Mexican cinema.  Kristy achieved candidacy in spring of 2009 and is currently preparing the prospectus for her dissertation on the history and discursive legacy of Mexican actress Lupe Vélez.  Kristy Rawson was awarded the Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant to conduct research for her dissertation in California and Mexico.

 
  Michael Arnold (2007)

Peter Alilunas (2008) is a second-year PhD student.  He has a BA in English from the University of Oregon and an MA in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.  He is a former co-editor-in-chief of flowtv.org and is currently a co-editor of the Michigan Feminist Studies journal.  His primary research interest is in the mediated construction of male masculinity and heteronormativity in contemporary popular Hollywood film.

 

Erin Hanna (2008) is a second year PhD student.  She has a BA in Film Studies and an MA in Cinema and Media studies from York University in Toronto, Canada.  Her research interests include media convergence, industry studies, television studies and fandom.  Her current research considers the recent trend of "rebooting" in film and television.

Nancy McVittie (2008) is a second-year PhD student. She has a BA in Fine Arts and English from Northern Illinois University and an MA in Film and Literature from North Carolina State University.  Her research is concerned with film history and American culture with specific focus on comedy in the post-war era.  Her most current work examines the relationship between the passage of Social Security and filmic representations of elder characters as "comedic" figures.

Simonetta Menossi (2008) is a second-year doctoral student. She graduated majoring in English and French at the Universita? degli Studi di Udine (Italy). After receiving a Certificate in Film Studies at Mount Holyoke College (MA), where she taught Italian at undergraduate level for two years, Simonetta received her Master of Arts in Film Studies at Emory University (Atlanta, GA). Her research interests focus on the dialogue between opera and cinema in the late 1910s. The starting point of such a project was extensive research on the "cross-over" stardom of operatic sopranos Geraldine Farrar and Lina Cavalieri who became Hollywood actresses in the late 1910s without abandoning the opera stage for the film set at any point of their careers. Currently, the project is developing on the lines of research in Film, Opera, and Gender/Women Studies.

 

 

Nathan Koob (2009) is interested in popular films and production contexts that produce effects often attributed to the avant-garde cinema such as ideological subversion, changes in directorial authority and radical reflexivity. In this vein, he has approached the relations between sexuality, authorship and genre through working with the films of John Waters, Brian DePalma, Robert Rodriguez and others. He received his MA in English with a Film Studies certificate from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 and his BA in English with a Film Studies certificate from Oklahoma State University in 2005.

 
Courtney Ritter (2009) received a B.A. from Cornell University in the History of Art in 2005 and an M.A. from New York University in Media, Culture and Communication in 2009.  She is interested in the development of television in Italy, specifically in the discourses around American programming and public vs. private broadcasting.
 
  Current SAC Certificate Students
Anne Berg (History/Modern Europe) is currently finishing her dissertation “In and Out of War: Space, Pleasure and Cinema in Hamburg, 1938-1949” in the Department of History at the University of Michigan. Addressing cinema as part of Hamburg’s larger economy of leisure and sociability, she argues that local discourses and indeed power struggles over cinematic practices and film policy fundamentally change our understanding of film in the Third Reich and in German history more generally.

Jennifer Fogel (Communication Studies) - Received her B.A.  (Communications & Film) from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Media studies from Syracuse University. Her research interests involve issues associated with representations of gender on television and in popular culture. Jennifer is currently examining contemporary discourses on the American family as depicted in various genres of television programming. Other areas of interest include: Teen TV, convergence culture, transmedia texts, and fan cultures.

 
 

Kenneth Garner (History/Modern Europe) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and a graduate certificate student in Screen Arts and Culture.  His research area is modern France, with a focus on the development of visual culture in the early twentieth century.

 
Charles Gentry (American Culture) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in American Culture.  His interests include film and media studies, black cultural studies, performance studies, arts management and cultural policy.  Charles received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio, earned a graduate certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures, and was a graduate student resident with the UM Center for World Performance Studies.  His dissertation, "The Othello Effect: The Performance of Black Masculinity in Mid-Century Cinema," is about political culture in the U.S. during the early Cold War era and the film careers of performers such as Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier.

Susanne Unger (Anthropology) is a doctoral candidate in linguistic anthropology and a  SAC certificate student. Her dissertation "Creating Cinephile  Citizens: Film Culture in Contemporary Germany" is based on  ethnographic research on film education programs and film festivals across Germany, and investigates local understandings of the relationships between film production, film consumption, and civic education.

 
  Navaneetha Makkil-Maruthur (English and Women's Studies) is a doctoral candidate in English and Women’s Studies. Her Ph D dissertation “Shadows of Progress: The Sexual Figures of Contemporary Kerala, India” examines how visual and literary practices configure and disrupt norms around sexuality in South Asia. In her research she analyzes a range of texts that includes public health campaign posters, popular films, interviews and novels in order to map how cultural representations construct the gendered public sphere. She is interested in the tracking the links between sexual and spatial practices and the complexities of the politics of visibility.