Administration: program design and direction

During the past six years, I have participated in the creation and administration of two academic programs at USC that are devoted to merging theory and practice through the use of media and technology. I was the principle architect and for three years (2004-07) served as Director of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy’s Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program, a four-year undergraduate program that seeks to develop innovative, media-rich modes of academic production across multiple disciplines. In 2008, the program graduated its first cohort of 31 students from disciplines as diverse as Biophysics, Engineering, Theater, Music, Cinematic Arts, Classics, East Asian Literature, Linguistics, Broadcast Journalism, International Relations and Business, each of whom had created a media-rich project based on research in his/her major; the program currently enrolls more than 150 students from across the university.

In my current position as Director of the interdivisional Media Arts & Practice Ph.D. program, which I helped design and found in 2007, I have had a rare opportunity to create a graduate program that responds to rapidly shifting practices in media and technology-enhanced scholarship. As we welcome our third cohort of students to the program in fall 2009, I believe iMAP has the potential to set an international standard among universities seeking to recognize emerging forms of scholarship at the intersection of theory and practice.

I believe USC’s establishment of these programs signals the importance of research that responds to changing paradigms of scholarship in the 21st century. Indeed, the university’s visionary strategic “Plan for Increasing Academic Excellence” (2004) cites the need for USC to continue its commitment to scholarly work that links fundamental research with applied research as a key element of its future success. I am proud to be associated with several of this university’s most provocative efforts in this direction, from the reshaping of undergraduate and graduate education through media and technology to the redefining of scholarly research and publication at the faculty level.

New to the School of Cinematic Arts in 2007, the interdivisional program in Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) situates technology and creative production alongside the historical and theoretical contexts of critical media studies. This practice-oriented Ph.D. program provides students with both practical experience and theoretical knowledge as they work to define new modes of research and production in the 21st century.

Media Arts and Practice was inspired by recent developments in media and technology that have altered the landscape of media production, analysis, distribution and display. Our goal is to support a new generation of scholar-practitioners who are able to combine historical and theoretical knowledge with creative and critical design skills. Students who complete a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Practice will be uniquely prepared to shape the future of media and scholarship, and to actively engage in the emerging cultural, technological and political dynamics of a global media ecology.

Honors in Multimedia Scholarship is an innovative four-year program for undergraduate students from across the USC campus who are interested in exploring new forms of scholarship and research. Working closely with leading USC faculty, students develop critical and creative abilities in the use of images, video, sound, text and interactivity, crafting media-rich forms of scholarship.

Conferences and Invited Presentations

Panel Chair: Visible Evidence XVI, Emerging Modes of Documentary: Mobile, Computational, Distributed, Summer 2009

Workshop: The Korsakow System: A Database Documentary Workshop, Visible Evidence XVI, Summer 2009

Invited Presentation: Open Video Conference, “Fair Use and Critical Commons,” Summer 2009

Paper Presentation: Games For Change: Documentary Games: The Case for Computational Documentary, Spring 2009

Invited presentation: “Interface Epistemologies: Designing New Paradigms of Knowledge” at American Comparative Literature Association conference, Spring 2008

Invited presentation: Respondent to Tracy Fullerton, “The Potential of Play: Digital Game Innovation” at Getty Research Center Works in Progress Lecture Series, Spring 2008

Panel Chair: State of the Art at 24/7: A DIY Video Summit with Henry Jenkins, Alex Juhasz, Juan Devis, Sam Gregory and Thenmozhi Soundararajan, February 2008

Workshop leader: Designing Interactive Narratives at 24/7: A DIY Video Summit, February 2008

Invited presentation: “Scholarship at the Interface” at Harvard Digital Humanities Center, November 2007

Invited presentation: “Multimedia Literacy in Higher Education” WASC Annual Conference, San Jose March 2007

Panel Chair: “The Roots and Future of Remix” at TransFormations I: Remixing the Archive, November 2006

Workshop: “San Jose Remixed: An Open Source Interactive Narrative Workshop” at ISEA (Inter-Society for Electronic Arts) San Jose, Summer 2006

Panel Chair: “The Future of Digital Education” Panel discussion held in Second Life, November 2006

Paper presentation: “Coming to Terms with the Digital Avant-Garde” Inter-Society for Electronic Arts, San Jose 2006

Poster session: “Re-Imagining the Electronic Journal” at Inter-Society for Electronic Arts, San Jose 2006

Workshop: “Designing Interactive Documentaries” SIGGRAPH Guerilla Studio, Boston 2006

Workshop: “Experiments in Interactive Panoramic Cinema” Electronic Imaging Science and Technology Symposium, San Jose 2006

Invited presentation: “Open Source Scholarship” Massive Multimedia Database, Annenberg Center for Communication, 2006

Invited presentation: “From Paper Prints to Fast Film: Techno-Syncretism and Digital Materiality” Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral lecture, Swarthmore College 2003

Paper presentation: “Steal This Archive: The Demise of Intellectual Property in the Digital Millennium” Society for Cinema Studies, Denver 2002

Paper presentation: “Past Indiscretions: Interactive Media and Recombinant History” Visible Evidence IX, Brisbane, Australia 2001

Paper presentation: “Where History Lies: Fact, Fiction and the Margins of History” Society for Cinema Studies, Chicago 2000

Panel chair: Spatializing History and Memory Interactive Frictions, USC 1999

Paper presentation: “Landscape Historicide: Textualizing the Past in James Benning’s Southwest Trilogy” Visible Evidence VII, UCLA 1999

Panel chair: Hollywood Cinema/Visionary Film Society for Cinema Studies, San Diego 1998

Paper presentation: “Dis(re)membering the Past: Experimental Film and Narrative History” Society for Cinema Studies, San Diego 1998

Paper presentation: “Politicizing the Past: The Materialist History Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniéle Huillet” Making/Unmaking History, USC 1998

Paper presentation: “Appropriated Images: Home Movies and Autobiographical Film” Visible Evidence V, Northwestern University 1997

Paper presentation: “Creative Remembering: The Significance of Anti-Realist History on Film and Television” International Association of Media and History Salisbury State University 1997

Committees

Chair, Media Arts & Practice Steering Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2007-Present

Chair, Media Arts & Practice Admissions Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2007-Present

Member of Interactive Media Job Search Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2009

Member of Interactive Media Graduate Admissions Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2009

Member of Curriculum Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2007-Present

Member of E-learning Committee, USC School of Cinematic Arts, 2006-8