Graduate Students

2025

Liam Kilby looking over his shoulder while holding a cell phone with a large building in the background.

Kilby, Liam

Interests: moving-image art; film materiality; theories and practices of archiving; forms of absence; queer cinema; trans cinema; visual culture of tattoos

Headshot of Dongkun.

Lyu, Dongkun

Interests: Labor studies; anthropology of art; post-socialist studies; China studies; Eastern European studies; critical urban theory; curatorial methodology

Saenz, Logan Li

BA, University of Pennsylvania (Art History)

Interests: The limits and potentialities of — inhabiting reconstruction, failure, loss/debt in post-socialist/post-colonial contexts (troubling post-ness); race-gender-sexuality and dispossession in Central America (+ the Caribbean) and Southeast Asia; socialities, intimacies, collectives, solidarities (trans-nationalism, trans-individuality); the [political] work of form; subjectivity, consciousness, and embodiment; the everyday and improvisation; materialisms and social reproduction; historicity and contemporaneity; the tensions between praxis and poiesis (and other aesthetic crises); “reading,” critique, and (radical) pedagogy; ultimately, negativity and messiness

Headshot of Hadil Wadi.

Wadi, Hadil

Interests: Film and media studies; cultural history; material culture; visual storytelling and narrative; postcolonialism; decolonization; feminism; performance art

Headshot of Ryan.

Watt, Ryan

Interests: Documentary film and nonfiction media; environmental criticism and activism; architecture; political economy; film and media studies; critical theory

Headshot of Youyang

You, Youyang

Interests: Contemporary art; media studies; critical theory; environmental aesthetics

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2024

Headshot of Yasaman.

Bagbahn, Yasaman

Web Address
Website

Interests: Human rights; sociopolitical issues; feminism; essay films; memory; personal documentaries; nonfiction art and archive

Augustine sitting in a chair holding a book in his lap.

Danso, Augustine

Interests: African/ Ghanaian cinema; questions of representation, power and politics

Headshot of Eleanor.

Gratz, Eleanor

Interests: Film and media studies; corporeality; gender and sexuality; media theory; formalist film theory; essay filmmaking

Steven's headshot.

Kielich, Steven

Interests: Japanese and Korean cinema and culture; film history and theory; video games; popular culture; psychoanalysis; continental philosophy

Juhee posing for the camera with their arms folded.

Kim, Juhee

Interests: Korean modern and contemporary art; art and politics; feminism, body, post-human; fine art's engagement with popular culture, mass media, and photography

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2023

Headshot of Hae Bin.

Koh, Haebin

Interests: The influence of technology on the modern and contemporary art; sculptures; speculative form and science fiction; physicality and embodiment; materiality

Headshot of Xuechun Lyu.

Lyu, Xuechun

Interests: Film and media studies; documentary; East Asian cinema; trauma studies; memory; sound and voice

Headshot of Mikaela Mehlrose.

Mehlrose, MK

Interests: Archival, craft, and queer scholarship, with an emphasis on their relationship to affect theory and epistemology

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2022

Emily Broad smiling at the camera.

Broad, Emily

Interests: Photography Theory; Farm Security Administration; Theorizing archives and museums; Art of the Arab World; Palestine; Ecocriticism and New Materialism; Vernacular Photography; Photography and Social Activism

Headshot of George.

Elkind, George

he/him/his

Interests: Labor history and theory; cinema studies (film history and theory); media industries; comics studies; media criticism; games studies; animation history; platform studies; cultural theory; political economy

Bethany Fincher posing for the camera.

Fincher, Bethany

Interests: Post-1960s land art, performance, and body art; Environmental and energy humanities; Theories of embodiment; Sound and noise studies; Ecohorror and body horror

Michael Galban in a workshop.

Galban, Michael

Interests: 17th & 18th century Eastern Woodland art and material culture; Indigenous gender roles in art; Indigenous Semiotics of the Colonial era; Contemporary Native American Art; Folklore; Eastern Woodland Body Modification; Colonial North American History; Public history and interpretation

Kangmin Kim posing for the camera.

Kim, Kangmin

Interests: Modern and contemporary art; Cold War; Migration; Ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and the United States; Home and unhomeliness

A headshot of Renee Yu Jin.

Yu Jin, Renee

she/her/hers

Web Address
Website

Interests: Anthropology of art; Sculpture; Modern and contemporary Chinese art; Art production and labor; Critical Urban Geography; Translocality and transnationalism

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2021

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2020

Arnett, Daly

Interests: 20th century Visual Culture; American Studies; Self-taught art; Folk art; Modernism(s); Historiography; Post-structuralism; Formalism

Barski, Justin

Interests: Critical Theory; Postmodernism; Modern and Contemporary Art; Aesthetic Theory; Systems Theory; Phenomenology; Surveillance; Computer Vision

Headshot of Jacob Carter.

Carter, Jacob

Interests: Film history and theory; queer cinema; film phenomenology; horror film; documentary

Genter Montevecchio, Elisabeth R.

Interests: Early Modern Art; Dutch and German Art; Monstrosity and the Grotesque in Art; Horror Theory; Gender Studies ; Film Studies and Popular Culture

Dylan Palmer

Palmer, Dylan

Interests: Post 1960s cinema, Marxism, continental philosophy, urban studies, geography, spatiality, temporality

Siheng Zhu

Zhu, Siheng

Interests: Animation; Game Studies; Popular Culture; Asian Studies; Media Studies; Globalization

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2019

Cheng, Hsin-Yun

she/her/hers

Interests: Asian American art; Asian diaspora; art and migration; decolonial studies; performance; subjectivity; labor; critical race theory

Headshot of Bridget Fleming.

Fleming, Bridget

Interests: Contemporary art; feminist media theory; essay films; sound studies; performance art; participatory and collaborative art practices

Genevro, Danielle

Interests: Pre-1960s cinemas; film history and theory; film style; special effects; Lacanian psychoanalysis

Keeton, Jamey

Interests: animation; comics studies; critical theory; digital humanities; film and television; popular culture; media studies

Segu Jensen, Catalina

Interests: digital media studies; critical theory and technology ; space and spatiality; globalization; capitalism; contemporary art

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2018

Karakaya, Elif

Interests: Global modern and contemporary art; memory studies, archival theory; migration; diaspora studies

Keye, Wade

Interests: Critical Study of New Media; Surveillance Studies; Online Memorial Culture; Memes

Sancto, Christian

Interests: Modern and contemporary art; Sound and moving images; Performance studies; Gender and sexuality; Aesthetics and critical theory

Taormina, Victoria

Interests: American popular culture; critical race theory; whiteness; theorizations of embodiment; digital humanities

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2017

DeBoer, Kendall

Interests: Surrealisms; Self-taught art; Folk art; Outliers; Artifice; Ornamentation; Decoration; Craft studies; Fiber art; Unconventional materials; Excess; Adornment; Theatricality; Gender

Nasirov, Yasin

Interests: Film and Philosophy; Russian Cinema; Adaptation Studies; Experimental Film; Kubrick

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