For many who are situated within or adjacent to the field named “Cinema and Media Studies,” what does the “and media” provide us? How does one study either, or both? This participatory workshop invites graduate students and early-career scholars to reflect on the diverse methods and practices in and beyond our interdisciplinary field known as "cinema and media studies." Through research presentations, collaborative discussions, and a final roundtable, participants will explore how different methodological approaches shape the questions we ask, the materials we work with, and the ways we conduct research in and outside academia.
Schedule
9:00 - 9:30 am - Catered Breakfast and Greetings
9:30 - 10:30 am - Tinghao Zhou
Tinghao Zhou is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the intersections of media theory, environmental humanities and justice, science and technology studies, and digital cultures in China and beyond.
10:30 - 11:30 am - Tara Plath
Tara Plath is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Studies Department at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BFA in Sculpture and BA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an interdisciplinary practice-based researcher whose interests include border media, spatial media, counter-mapping, human rights, and open-source investigation techniques.
11:30 am - 1:10 pm - Catered Lunch
1:10 - 2:10 pm - Bianka Ballina
Bianka Ballina is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She teaches courses on film and media history, global media cultures, and Latin American and Latinx media. Bianka’s research interests include film and media histories of the Global South with a special focus on Latin America, migrant and diasporic media, and transnational solidarities. Her current project, entitled Vital Exports: Mediating Cuban Solidarity and Global South Imaginaries, explores media’s pivotal role in the discourses and practices of Cuban internationalism and South-South cooperation since the Cold War, foregrounding historical exchanges with various African nations.
2:10 - 3:10 pm - Chenshu Zhou
Chenshu Zhou is an Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2016. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn, she held postdoctoral teaching positions at NYU Shanghai (2019-2020) and Stanford University (2016-2019). With broad training in cinema and media studies and China studies, Dr. Zhou’s research explores screen-based media of various kinds, particularly how media experiences are situated in relation to broad social structures and everyday life. Her first book Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China (University of California Press, 2021) received the 2022 Best First Book Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies.
3:10 -3:30 pm - Coffee Break
3:30 -4:30 pm - Wanda Strauven
Wanda Strauven is a film and media scholar whose research focuses on media archaeology, marginal film practices, touch-based media, feminist labs, textile technologies, and children’s play with media. She currently teaches in the Film and Media Studies program at Columbia University in the City of New York, and was previously Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her most recent books are Touchscreen Archaeology: Tracing Histories of Hands-On Media Practices (meson press, 2021), which won the 2022 Limina Award for Best International Cinema Studies Book, and Children Reinventing Cinema: Snapshots from the Early 21st Century (co-authored with Alexandra Schneider, meson press, 2025).
4:30 -6:00 pm - Round Table with Karen Redrobe
Karen Redrobe is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. She has served as Department Chair of History of Art, Director of the Wolf Humanities Center, Advisor to the Arts for the University, Diversity Search Advisor for the Humanities, and Director of the Program in Cinema and Media Studies. She is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism (Duke UP, 2003); Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis (Duke UP, 2010, available open access), and Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (UC Press: Feminist Media Histories Series/Luminosoa, 2025, available open access), and she is the editor of Animating Film Theory (Duke UP, 2014, available open access).
6:00 - 6:10 pm - Closing Remarks
6:30 pm - Happy Hour
