Dissertations

Listed by year of graduation

2024

 Geneveive Newman, Assistant Professor, Ball State University

  • Dissertation Title: “Of Victims and Survivors: Representing Collective and Individual Rape Trauma”
  • Chair: Adam Lowenstein
  • Readers: Neepa Majumdar, Mark Lynn Anderson, Bridget Keown (Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies), and David Pettersen (French)

2023

 Silpa Mukherjee, Assistant Professor of Film & Media, Global South, and Cultural Studies, University of California San Diego

  • Dissertation Title: “Cinema as Contraband: Bombay’s Cine-Crime Nexus, 1977-1991”
  • Chair: Neepa Majumdar
  • Readers: Mark Lynn Anderson, Adam Lowenstein, Randall Halle (German), and Ranjani Mazumdar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Jonah Jeng, Visiting Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh Film & Media Studies

  • Dissertation Title: “The Long Take: A Spectacular Film Realism for the Anthropocene”
  • Chair: Adam Lowenstein
  • Readers: Neepa Majumdar, Zachary Horton, and Randall Halle (German)

Jordan Parrish

  • Dissertation Title: “A Phantom Experience: Traumatic Embodiment in Temporal Body Horror Cinema”
  • Chair: Adam Lowenstein
  • Readers: Zachary Horton, Jennifer Waldron, and Charles Exley (East Asian Languages & Literatures)

Nikhil Titus

  • Dissertation Title: “Curated Desires: Intersections of Low-Grade Cinema, Migration, and Gentrification in Mumbai”
  • Chair: Neepa Majumdar
  • Readers: Robert Clift, Zachary Horton, and Randall Halle (German)

2022

Jordan Bernsmeier, Visiting Lecturer (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
  • Dissertation: "Aluminum Lesbians: Recycling Lesbian Legacy in Classical Hollywood"
  • Chair: Mark Lynn Anderson (English)
  • Readers: Jules Gill-Peterson (English), Nancy Glazener (English), David Pettersen (French & Italian)
Adam Hebert, Visiting Lecturer (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
  • Dissertation: "Process over Product: Kinesthetic Cinema, Sporting Bodies, and Media Milieux"
  • Chair: Mark Lynn Anderson (English)
  • Readers: Randall Halle (German), Adam Lowenstein (English), Neepa Majumdar (English)

2020

Kelsey Cummings, Visiting Assistant Professor in Communication, Tulane University
  • Dissertation: White Design: Engineering the Visualization of Race and Racism in Social Media
  • Chair: Jinying Li (English) & Zachary Horton (English)
  • Readers: Mark Lynn Anderson (English), Brenton Malin (Communication), Elizabeth Reich (English)
Sonia Lupher
  • Dissertation: From Women's Cinema to Women's Horror Cinema: Genre and Gender in the Twenty-First Century
  • Chair: Adam Lowenstein (English)
  • Readers: Lucy Fischer (English), Neepa Majumdar (English), David Pettersen (French & Italian)

2019

Olga Kim
Kuhu Tanvir, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University
  • Dissertation: Cinema in Fragments: Transmediating Popular Hindi Cinema on Small Screens
  • Chair: Neepa Majumdar (English)
  • Readers: Nancy Condee (Slavic), Jinying Li (English), Aswin Punathambekar (Communication Studies, University of Michigan), Jennifer Waldron (English)
John Taylor, Georgia Institute of Technology

2018

Katie Bird, Assistant Professor, Film Theory and Digital Media Production, University of Texas at El Paso
Kelsey Cameron, Assistant Professor, Communication and Emergent Media, Regis University
Veronica Fitzpatrick, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University
Jeffrey Heinzl, Instructor, Film and Media Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Javier O'Neil-Ortiz
Laura Stamm, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
  • Dissertation: Pataphysical Networking: Virtuality, Potentiality and the Experimental Works of the Collège de 'Pataphysique, the Oulipo, and the Mouvement Panique
2017
Ljudmila Bilkic, Associate Professor, Kansas State University
Jedd Hakimi, Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh
Julie Nakama, Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh
Felipe Pruneda Senties, Director of the Writing Center, Hendrix College
John Rhym, Assistant Professor, Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute

Natalie Ryabchikova

Kelly Trimble

2016

Dan Chyutin, Teaching Fellow, Tel Aviv University and Open University of Israel
Richard Beach Gray, Media Analyst, Novetta Advanced Analytics
Natalia Ryabchikova, Lecturer, Moscow Art Theatre School, American Studio

Anne Wesserling, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of North Georgia

2015

Kevin Flanagan, Term Assistant Professor of English, George Mason University
Candice Wilson, Assistant Professor of Film and Digital Media, University of North Georgia-Gainsville

2014

Erin Alpert, Part-time Instructor, University of Pittsburgh

Gavin M. Hicks

Usha Iyer, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Stanford University
Kathleen Murray, Senior Writer/Editor, MarCom Group, Washington DC

Christopher Nielsen, Educator, Institute for Health and Socioeconomic Policy/National Nurses United

Seung-hwan Shin, Adjunct Instructor in East Asian Studies (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
John Trenz, Certificated Substitute, Los Angeles Unified School District

2013

Kristen Fallica, Digital Strategist, Chicago Humanities Festival

Yvonne Franke, Assistant Professor of German, Midwestern State University

Olga Kilmova, Visiting Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh

2012

Ryan Pierson, Assistant Professor, Department of Communications, Media and Film, University of Calgary
Colleen Jankovic, Copyeditor, Grant Writer, and Writing Project Consultant

Yahya Laayouni, Assistant Professor of Arabic and French, Bloomsberg University of Pennsylvania

2011

Alison Patterson, Lecturer in English and Film Studies (NTS), University of Pittsburgh

2010

Tanine Allison, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Emory University
Amy Borden, Assistant Professor of Film and Theater, Portland State University
Rick Warner, Assistant Professor (TTS), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

2009

Kara Andersen, Assistant Professor of Film (TS), Brooklyn College
Molly Brown, Research Director, Wise Brother Media
Jill Dione, Retired

Natalia Maria Ramirez-Lopez, 

Dawn Seckler, Associate Director of Development, Bridgeway Capital

Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, Assistant Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago
Kyle Stevens, Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Appalachian State University
Kirsten Strayer

2008

Gregory Allen
Manisha Basu, Associate Professor of English and African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2007

Amanda Klein, Associate Professor of Film Studies (TS), East Carolina University

2006

Dana Och, Lecturer in English and Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh
Daniel Wild
  • Dissertation: The Writing on the Screen: Images of Text in the German Cinema from 1920-1949
  • Chair: Marcia Landy (English)
  • Readers: Paul Bové (English), Lucy Fischer (English), Linda Shulte-Sasse (German, McAllister College)

2005

Anustup Basu, Associate Professor of English and Media and Cinema Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Clare Connors, Instructor (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
  • Dissertation: Hollywood Youth Narratives and the Family Values Campaign 1980-1992
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers: Troy Boone (English), Marcia Landy (English), Carol Stabile (Communications)

2004

Julia Turner
  • Dissertation: Reading Scars: Circumcision as Textual Trope
  • Chair: Philip Smith (English)
  • Readers:  Lucy Fischer (English), Mariolina Salvatori, Greg Goekjian (Portland State University)

2003

Emily T. Bauman, Master Teacher of Liberal Studies, New York University
Andrew C. Miller, Associate Professor and Chair of Media Studies and Digital Culture, Sacred Heart University
  • Dissertation: Laying Down the Rules: The American Sports Film Genre From 1872 to 1960
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers: Jane Feuer (English), Moya Luckett, Carol Stabile (Communications)

Elena Prokhorova

2002

Michael G. Aronson, Associate Professor of English and Director of Cinema Studies, University of Oregon
  • Dissertation: Nickels and Dimes: The Movies in a Rampantly American City, 1914-1923
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers: Moya Luckett, Jane Feuer, Gregory Waller (University of Kentucky)
Hugh S. Manon, Associate Professor of Screen Studies and Director of the Screen Studies Program, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Clark University
  • Dissertation: As Far As Anyone Knows: Fetishism and the Anti-Televisual Paradoxes of Film Noir
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers: Valerie Krips, James Knapp, Henry Krips (Communications)

Alexander Prokhorov, Associate Professor, College of William and Mary

2001

Kara Keeling, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago

2000

Patricia Caillé, Assistant Professor, (TTS) Université Robert Schuman de Strasbourg and Institute of European Studies, Paris
  • Dissertation:  French Film Criticism, Authorship, and National Culture in the Mirror of John Cassavetes’s Body, His Life, His Work
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers:  Marcia Landy (English), James Knapp
Ellen Kreger, Instructor of Film, Westchester Community College
  • Dissertation: In The Shadow of His Language: Language and Feminine Subjectivity in the Cinema
  • Chair:  Colin MacCabe (English)
  • Readers:  Lucy Fischer (English), Lynn Emanuel, Patrizia Lombardo (French and Italian)
David Sidore, Associate Professor, English, Macon State College

1998

Patrice Fleck, Professor, English, Northern Virginia Community College
  • Dissertation: The Emergence of Date Rape: Feminism, Theory, Institutional Discourse, and Popular Culture
  • Chair: Jane Feuer (English)
  • Readers: Nancy Glazener (English),  Lucy Fischer (English), Carol A. Stabile (Communications)

1997

Anne Ciecko, Associate Professor, Communications, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joy Fuqua, Associate Professor, Media Studies, Queens College
Lori Shorr, Chief Education Officer, Mayor of Philadelphia’s Office
  • Dissertation: Technology, the Natural and the Other: The Case of Childbirth Representations in Contemporary Popular Culture
  • Chair:  Lucy Fischer (English)
  • Readers: Marcia Landy (English), Dana Polan, Iris M. Young (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh)
Amy Villarejo, Professor and Chair, Theatre, Film & Dance Department, Cornell University

1995

Ellen Bishop, Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh
  • Dissertation: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Science Fiction: Gender and Ways of Thinking Otherwise
  • Chair:  Philip Smith
  • Readers: Marica Landy (English), Lucy Fischer (English), Dana Polan, Tamara Horowitz (Philosophy)
Matthew Tinckom, Associate Professor of Communications, Culture, and Technology and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Georgetown University

1994

Madhava Prasad, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies, Centre for European Studies, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (Hyderabad, India)

1993

John Champagne, Professor of English, Penn State Erie, the Behrend College

1989

Linda Mizejewski, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University