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I am a Professor in the Media Arts + Practice Division of the  School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. My work centers on the ways in which communication and expression are impacted by digital culture, particularly with the addition to text of sound, images and interactivity as semiotic resources. My current research projects are:  The VAT (video analysis tableau) applies computational analysis to the study of moving image media and the Library Machine which uses a gestural interface to conduct visual search of artists book and other artifacts from Special Collections in the USC Libraries.  I direct the Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program and a graduate certificate in Media Arts and Culture and  I teach a range of undergraduate and graduate  courses, all of which marry theory and practice.

I  joined USC in 2005 after successfully defending one of the first media-rich, born-digital dissertations in the United States, challenging archiving and copyright conventions (see this article in Academe for details).  My dissertation, Ways of Composing: Visual Literacy in the Digital Age, challenged copyright and archiving conventions. Committed to helping shape emergent tools for scholarly endeavors, I published the first article created in the authoring platform, Scalar. “Filmic Texts and the Rise of the Fifth Estate,” appeared in the International Journal of Learning and Media (Spring, 2011). After co-editing two peer-reviewed digital anthologies with Victor Vitanza (Kairos, 2006, 2010), I co-edited a print-based anthology with Vicki Callahan titled, Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies (Parlor Press, 2015) and am currently working on a monograph.

I was the 2009 recipient of the USC Provost’s award for Teaching with Technology, and I co-chaired the Scholarly Interest Group on Media Literacy and Pedagogical Outreach for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies for several years. I also currently serve on the editorial boards of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and PedagogyPRE/TEXT: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, and the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, [in]Transition,  and REFRAME: Research in Media, Film and Music. Before joining USC, I taught in departments of Film, English, and Cultural Studies and I spent three years as a member of the writing program administration team at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I earned my doctorate.

CV

My author page at Amazon.

Scholarship

Article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed: Digital Dissertation Dust Up