Faculty in the George Mason University Film and Media Studies program are: Steve Burton, Julie Christensen, Cynthia Fuchs (FAMS Director) , Timothy Gibson, Alison Landsberg, Cynthia M. Lont, Janine M. Ricouart, Jeanette Roan, Mark Sample, Jessica Scarlata, and Martin Winkler.

Julie A. Christensen, PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley, is Associate Professor of Russian at George Mason. Her RUSS 470 Topics in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema has focused on Early Soviet Silents (Eisenstein, Vertov, Dovzhenko, et.al.), on women directors in the former Eastern Bloc, on contemporary Russian cinema, and on cinema from the former republics. Her fall 05 course will look at films from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia. Her publications have focused primarily on Georgian cinema.

Cynthia Fuchs, (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) specializes in media, youth, and popular cultures (in particular, hip-hop), African American studies, gender studies, and queer studies. The Director of George Mason's Film & Media Studies Program, she is also film and book reviewer for Philadelphia Citypaper, weekly film reviewer for Common Sense Media, film-tv-dvd editor/hip-hop columnist for the weekly cultural studies magazine, PopMatters, and columnist for Flow. She has published articles on hip-hop, Prince, Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls, queer punks, "bad" kids in Bully and George Washington, and media coverage of the war against Iraq. She edited, Spike Lee: Interviews (2002), and co-edited, Between the Sheets, In the Streets: queer, lesbian, and gay documentary (1997). She has a forthcoming book on Eminem, and forthcoming articles on Jay-Z; Buffy and Dark Angel; Shakira; Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise; and Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Timothy Gibson, Assistant Professor of Communication. He received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He received his M.A. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and he received his Ph.D in Communication from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. Dr. Gibson's interests include critical/cultural studies, the political economy of communication, popular culture, and political communication. His own research has focused primarily on representations of wealth and poverty in urban America, and the circulation of these representations in the news media, in local communities, and among urban policy-makers. Recent publications include a book on questioning "downtown revitalization" entitled Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle (2003), an article in the Journal of Communication Inquiry on ethnographic approaches to critical audience research, an analysis of discourses of race and class on ABC News Nightline published in Rethinking Marxism, and a co-authored book on Canada's press entitled, The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada's Press (2000).

Alison Landsberg, received her Ph.D. in literature and film from the University of Chicago in 1996. Her first book, entitled, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (2004) argues that mass cultural technologies such as the cinema and the experiential museum have made it increasingly possible for individuals to take on memories of events through which they did not live, memories that have important ramifications for their subjectivities, politics, and ethics. She is currently working on a book-length project entitled, “Squaw Men and Indian Wives: Mapping Gender, Race and National Belonging, 1870-1930,” which explores representations of interracial romance and passing in film and mass culture in order to make visible changing assumptions about racial identity, gender, national belonging and citizenship. Recent publications have appeared in The Liquid Metal Reader, ed. Sean Redmond (2004), Film and Popular Memory, ed. Paul Grainge (2003) and The Cyberculture Reader (2000).

Cynthia M. Lont, Dr. Lont is Professor of Communication and Director of the Student Video Center. Her degrees include an A.A. from Auburn Community College, a BA from The State University of New York at Oswego, MA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She taught previously at SUNY Oswego and had professional positions including: Producer-Director, SUNY Oswego, and Managing Producer for The Agency for Instructional Television in Bloomington, Indiana. Courses taught include: Radio Workshop, Television Workshop, Yearbook Workshop, Mass Communication, Radio Production, Television Production, Producing and Directing, Women and Media, Mass Communication Advertising, Theories of Human Communication, Theories of Mass Communication, and Theories of Visual Communication. Dr. Lont is the past chair of the Communication Department, the NCA Feminist and Women Studies Division and NCA Women's Caucus. She has received many video awards including several Communicators, Tellys and the ITVA Award. Her most recent chapter is: "Frances Benjamin Johnston: Mother of Photojournalism" in Theresa Carilli & Jane Campbell's Women and the Media: National and Global Perspectives (2004). Dr. Lont earned the 2003-2004 Fenwick Fellowship for her work on Women and Media. Presently she is writing a book on women's music. Dr. Lont is the Director of a Masters degree in Video Based Production.

Janine M. Ricouart, is a Professor of French. She received an Eng. Lic. in 1973 from the Universite de Lille, France and her Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of California, Davis.

Jeanette Roan, Assistant Professor of English. She received her B.A. in Visual Arts from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. Her research and teaching interests include topics in the areas of film studies, cultural studies, and Asian American studies, such as the emergence of cinema during the "age of empire," race and ethnicity in U.S. film, cinema and Asian Pacific American culture, and globalization and culture. Her essay "Travels to Asia and the Pacific in Early Cinema" appears in the anthology Re/collecting Early Asian America: Readings in Cultural History (2002). She is currently working on a book-length manuscript about travel, exoticism, and cinema from high imperialism to global culture tentatively titled "Fictions of Faraway Places."

Mark Sample, Assistant Professor of English, teaches and researches both contemporary American literature and New Media/Digital Culture, and he is always exploring how literary texts interact with, critique, and rework visual and media texts. He has published on The Omega Man, a cult science fiction film from the seventies, and has also worked on Charlton Heston's other post-apocalyptic films from the same era, The Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green. Professor Sample's most recent research concerns the interplay between video games, the War on Terror, and the production of knowledge. Professor Sample received an M.A. in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University (1998) and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (2004).

Jessica Scarlata, Assistant Professor, comes to George Mason after serving as a visiting assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University. Scarlata received her PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University in 2004.

Martin Winkler, is a Professor of Classics. He received his MA in 1977 from West Virginia University and his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Southern California.


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Last update: April 18, 2006