Faculty
Shelleen Greene
Vice Chair, Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor
Shelleen Greene is an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Her research interests include Italian film, Black European studies, and digital feminist studies. Her book, Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa – Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema (Continuum/Bloomsbury 2012) examines the representation of mixed-race subjects of Italian and African descent, arguing that the changing cultural representations of mixed-race identity reveal shifts in the country’s conceptual paradigms of race and nation. She has published in the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Italian Culture, California Italian Studies, estetica, studi e ricerche, Feminist Media Studies and ADA: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology.
Greene has presented at the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA), the British School at Rome, University of Bologna, Italy; the Calandra Italian American Institute, CUNY; the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference; and the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center at Indiana University.
Her work has also been published in From Terrone to Extracomunitario: New Manifestations of Racism in Contemporary Italian Cinema: Shifting Demographics and Changing Images in a Multi-Cultural Globalized Society (Troubador Press, 2010) and Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), and the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini (2020).
Prior to UCLA TFT, Greene was an associate professor of writing and critical thinking at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Bard College and her Ph.D. from the Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine.
Greene is a recipient of the 2020-2021 Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award, University of Leeds, U.K.
Contact
- E-mail: sgreene9@tft.ucla.edu
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa – Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema. London and New York: Continuum Press, 2012.
BOOK CHAPTERS
“The Black American Soldier: Italian Cinematic Reflections.” Italy and the Military: Cultural Perspectives from Unification to Contemporary Italy. (Co-authored with Mattia Roveri). Ed. Mattia Roveri. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 347-363.
"Racial Difference and the Postcolonial Imaginary in the films of Federico Fellini." Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Federico Fellini. Eds. Frank Burke, Marguerite Waller, Marita Gubareva. Hoboken, NJ and Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell. 2020. 331-346.
“The New ‘Material Girls’: Madonna, ‘Millennial’ Pop Divas, and the Politics of Race and Gender.” Future Texts: Subversive Performance and Feminist Bodies. Edited by Vicki Callahan and Virginia Kuhn. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2015. 13-26.
"Buffalo Soldiers on Film: Il soldato afroamericano nel cinema neorealista e postbellico italiano" (“Buffalo Soldiers on Film: The African American Soldier in Italian Neorealist and Postwar Cinema.”). L’Africa in Italia: per una controstoria postcoloniale del cinema italiano (Africa in Italy: Towards a Postcolonial Counterhistory of the Italian Cinema). Edited by Leonardo De Franceschi. Rome: Aracne, 2013. 93-108.
"La diaspora africana in Italia: immigrazione e identità nazionale in Waalo Fendo di Mohammed Soudani ed in Western Union: Small Boats di Isaac Julien." (“The African Diaspora in Italy: Immigration and National Belonging in Mohammed Soudani’s Where the Earth Freezes and Isaac Julien’s Western Union: small boats”) in Un Nuovo Cinema Politico Italiano? Volume 1 (A New Italian Political Cinema? Volume 1). Edited by William Hope, Luciana d’Arcangeli, and Silvana Serra. Leicester, UK: Troubador, 2013. 187-198.
ARTICLES
“Beyond Reality and Fiction: William Demby’s Congo vivo.” Italian Culture. 38.2 (2020).
"Rhino/Rhinoceros: Experimental Cinema and the Migrant Condition." California Italian Studies. 8.2 (2019).
“Bina 48: Race, Gender, and Queer Artificial Life.” ADA: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology. (2016) Issue 9. DOI: 10.7264/N3G44NKP.
“Talking About Whiteness: Using Digital Pedagogy to Interrogate Racial Privilege.” Critical Pedagogies in Neoliberal Times. Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier Vol. 3(2). Eds. Courtney Bailey and Julie Wilson. June 2015.
BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS
Zero (Netflix, 2021). Produced by Fabula Pictures and Red Joint Film. Created by Antonio Dikele Distefano, Menotti, Stefano Voltaggio, Massimo Vavassori, Carolina Cavalli and Lisandro Monaco. Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies. 10.3 (2022). 531-536.
A Companion to Italian Cinema. Wiley-Blackwell: Malden and Oxford, 2017. 618 pp. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 16:2, 210-215, DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2018.1446733.
Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Alexander Weheliye. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 2014. 209 pp. Somatechnics. 6.1 (2016): 119-122.
“The Italian ‘Race’ and Its Discontents.” Bianco e Nero: Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani. Gaia Giuliani and Cristina Lombardi-Diop. Milan: Mondadori Education S.p.A., 2013, 206 pp. g/s/i (gender/sexuality/Italy). August 2015.
Affirmative Reaction: New Formations of White Masculinity. Hamilton Carroll. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, 221 pp. The Journal of Popular Culture. 45. 4 (August 2012): 917-920.
CATALOGUE ESSAYS
"Isaac Julien’s Expeditions." Isaac Julien: Expeditions. Christina Dittrich ed. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 2012. 30-59.
INVITED ESSAYS
“Italy and the Archives of Black Futurity.” estetica. studi e ricerche. Vol. XI – 1.2021, 31-44.
“Race and Ethnicity in Italian Film Studies” Diversity in Italian Studies. John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, The City College of New York. New York, NY, 2021.
“IT’S IN THE GAME ’17 or Mirror Gag for Vitrine and Projection.” Black One Shot. ASAP/Journal. Eds. Michael Gillespie and Lisa Uddin. July 16, 2020.
"Il soldato americano." (“The American Soldier in Italian Neorealist and Postwar Film.”) Italia A/R: Migrazioni nel/del cinema italiano (Italy A/R: Migrations to/from the Italian Cinema). Daniela Aronica and Vito Zagarrio, eds. Special Issue, Quaderni del CSCI, No. 8 (Annual Journal of Italian Cinema, The Center for the Study of Italian Cinema, No. 8) (2012): 177-179.
“Il Mulatto.” Italia A/R: Migrazioni nel/del cinema italiano (Italy A/R: Migrations to/from the Italian Cinema). Daniela Aronica and Vito Zagarrio, eds. Special Issue, Quaderni del CSCI, No. 8 (Annual Journal of Italian Cinema, The Center for the Study of Italian Cinema, No. 8) (2012): 208-209.
Faculty
ELLEN C. SCOTT
Associate Professor
Professor Ellen C. Scott, Ph.D., specializes in media history, African American cultural history, film and media theory, American film history, sound theory, the history of censorship and cultural studies. Her research focuses on the cultural meanings and reverberations of film in African American communities and, more broadly, the relationship of media to the struggle for racial justice and equality. Her first book, Cinema Civil Rights (Rutgers University Press, 2015) exposes the Classical Hollywood-era studio system's careful repression of civil rights but also the stuttered appearance of these issues through latent, symptomatic signifiers. After tracing these films from their first conception through restrictions imposed on them by industry and state censors, the study ends by assessing how Black political figures and journalists turned Hollywood's repressed racial imaginary into fodder for their own resistant spectatorship and full-blown civil rights demands.
She is currently working on two projects, one examining the history of slavery on the American screen and another on the history of Classical Hollywood-era Black women film critics.
Scott is passionate about teaching and mentorship. Before arriving at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, she was an assistant professor of media history at CUNY-Queen's College in New York where she served as chair of the Undergraduate Studies Committee. She was also a standing selection committee member and mentor for Queens College's Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship; and the co-chair of the Black Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2007-08).
Scott has taught a range of courses including "African Americans in Television and Film," "Race and Ethnicity in American Media," "Media Censorship," "Media Criticism," "The Peopling of New York," "The Social Problem Film" and "The History of Broadcasting."
She is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Mellon Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship and the Mellon Career Enhancement Fellowship. In 2016, she was awarded the Academy Film Scholars grant for her project "Cinema's Peculiar Institution," which investigates the history of slavery on screen.
Scott received her B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. She also received a graduate certificate in Screen Arts and Cultures from the University of Michigan in 2007.
Select Publications
Cinema Civil Rights Rutgers University Press (2015)
"Sounding Black: Cultural Identification, Sound, and the Films of Spike Lee," in J. D. Hamlet and R. M. Coleman, editors, Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader (Peter Lang, 2008)
Contact
Faculty
Arne Lunde
Associate Professor
Arne Lunde is Associate Professor in the Scandinavian Section of the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies (ELTS) and Affiliate Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA TFT. His research interests include Nordic cinema, European exiles and emigres in classic Hollywood and Los Angeles, film noir, studio-era film style and aesthetics, and transcultural cinemas of elsewhere.
His book Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema explores how Scandinavian whiteness and ethnicity functioned in Hollywood cinema between and during the two world wars. Lunde is co-editor with Anna Westerstahl Stenport of Georgia Tech University of Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewheres (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). The volume introduces a new concept to Nordic film studies as well as to other small national, transnational and world cinema traditions. Examining overlooked “elsewheres,” the book presents Nordic cinemas as international, cosmopolitan, diasporic and geographically dispersed, from their beginnings in the early silent period to their present 21st-century dynamics.
Lunde has also published on Ingmar Bergman in the 1940s and 1950s, including the articles “Ingmar’s Hitchcockian Cameos: Early Bergman as Auteur inside the Swedish Studio System” and “Through a Laugh Darkly: Comedy in the Films of Ingmar Bergman” in Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, as well as the chapter “The Story of a Bad Girl!: Summer with Monika, Sexploitation and the Selling of Erotic Bergman in America” in Beyond Swedish Summers: The Breakthrough of Sexuality in Swedish Cinema. Lunde’s articles and reviews have appeared in Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Film International, Film Quarterly, The Moving Image, Scandinavian Studies, Scandinavica, and Comparative Literature.
His current research explores European identities within the classic Hollywood studio system and the city of Los Angeles as a site of cultural production, focusing on the impact of European emigres and exiles on American cinema, especially the development of film noir as a key genre.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2003
M.A., University of Washington, Seattle, 1998
Oslo Year Program, University of Oslo, Norway, 1995-1996
B.A. University of Washington, Seattle, 1989
FIELDS OF INTEREST
Cinema and Media, Classic Hollywood and Europe, Nordic Literature and Visual Culture
FEATURED WORKS
Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere (Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema (University of Washington Press, 2010)
BOOK CHAPTERS
“The Serpent’s Egg: Ingmar Bergman’s Exilic Elsewheres in 1970s New German and New Hollywood Cinema," co-written with Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere, Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde, volume eds. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019): 341-359.
“The Story of a Bad Girl!: Summer with Monika, Sexploitation and the Selling of Erotic Bergman in America,” Beyond Swedish Summers: The Breakthrough of Sexuality in Swedish Cinema, Elisabet Björklund and Mariah Larsson, eds. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2016): 11-20.
“The Scandinavian Colonies of Silent Era Hollywood,” The Blackwell Companion to Nordic Cinema. Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist, eds., (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2016): 396-416.
“Going Hollywood: Nordic Directors in Contemporary American Cinema,” Popular Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures in the Global Marketplace. Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Käpää, eds. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015): 230-243.
“Knut Hamsun on Film in Transnational Contexts,” Knut Hamsun: Transgression and Worlding, Ståle Dingstad, Ylva Frøjd, Elisabeth Oxfeldt and Ellen Rees, eds. (Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press, 2011): 265-27.
“‘Garbo Talks!’: Scandinavians in Hollywood, the Talkie Revolution, and the Crisis of Foreign Voice,” Screen Culture: History and Textuality (Stockholm Studies in Cinema series), John Fullerton, ed. (Sydney: John Libbey & Co., 2004): 21-39.
PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Ingmar’s Hitchcockian Cameos: Early Bergman as auteur inside the Swedish studio system,” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. 8:1 (2018): 19-33.
“Through a Laugh Darkly: Comedy in the Films of Ingmar Bergman,” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. 4:3 (2014): 255-260.
“Look to Norway!: The Nazi Occupation of Norway in Hollywood Wartime Cinema,” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 2.3 (2012): 299-314.
“After The Celebration: Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love.” Film International 9.2 (2011): 20-29.
“Scandinavian Auteur as Chameleon: How Benjamin Christensen Reinvented Himself in Hollywood, 1925-1929.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 1.1 (2011): 7-23.
“Op med hodet: Tancred Ibsen’s 1933 Experiment in Cinematic Modernism.” Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 19 (2010): 56-71.
“Knut Hamsun at the Movies in Transnational Contexts.” Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur 25 (2009): 41-52.
“Politics, Aesthetics, and Afterlife in Paa gjengrodde stier: Retracing Knut Hamsun’s ‘Overgrown Paths’ toward Nazism.” Scandinavica. 47.2 (2008): 175-190.
“Helga Crane’s Copenhagen: Denmark, Colonialism, and Transnational Identity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” With Anna Westerståhl Stenport. Comparative Literature. 60.3 (2008): 228-243.
COURSES TAUGHT
- SCAND 19: Fiat Lux Freshman Seminar: Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen
- SCAND 50/50W: Introduction to Scandinavian Literature and Cultures
- SCAND 60W: Introduction to Nordic Cinema
- SCAND 141C: The Short Story in Scandinavia
- SCAND 145A/245A: Henrik Ibsen
- SCAND 145B/245B: Knut Hamsun
- SCAND 155: The Modern Breakthrough
- SCAND 161: Introduction to Nordic Cinema
- SCAND 163A/263A: Danish Cinema
- SCAND 163B/263B: Swedish Cinema
- SCAND 163C/263C: Norwegian Cinema
- SCAND 166A/266A: Ingmar Bergman
- SCAND 166C/266C: Carl Th. Dreyer
- ELTS 167: European Identities in Classic Hollywood Cinema and Los Angeles
Contact
- E-mail: lunde@humnet.ucla.edu
- Office: 332C Royce Hall
Faculty
Sylvan Oswald
Head of Playwriting; Associate Professor
Sylvan Oswald is a writer and artist working at the intersection of theater and live art. His language-driven plays, texts, publications and videos unravel narrative forms to explore how we construct our identities.
Recent projects include Trainers, a theatrical essay; High Winds, a live show adapted from the artist’s book he co-created with Jessica Fleischmann (X Artists’ Books, 2017); Outtakes, a web series; and A Kind of Weather, a play, which will premiere at San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre in 2020. Other plays include Sun Ra (Joe’s Pub), Profanity (Undermain Theater, Dallas; Nightlands (New Georges), Pony (About Face Theater, Chicago) and Vendetta Chrome (Clubbed Thumb).
Oswald is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Drama and Performance Art. Additional honors include the Dorothy B. Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship at Soho Rep, the Rosati Fellowship from Duke University Libraries, the Thom Thomas award from The Dramatists Guild, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and residencies at Sudance/Ucross, Macdowell Colony, Yaddo, Bau Institute/Camargo, and The Millay Colony for the Arts.
His interest in new approaches to playwriting led to Play A Journal of Plays (2003-2011), which he co-published with Jordan Harrison; and the Experimental Text Festival at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater (2007), which he co-curated with Jennifer L. Tsuei; and the major essay "Cut Piece" at Three Hole Press. Other theater writing appears in Imagined Theatres (Routledge), Fifty Playwrights on Their Craft (Methuen); Audience (R)Evolution (TCG), Osmos, The Best American Non-Required Reading 2014, PAJ, Factorial, Encyclopedia and The Brooklyn Rail. Oswald also works on issues facing trans artists in theater.
Oswald is an affiliated artist at Clubbed Thumb and an alumnus of New Dramatists. For info and requests to read his plays, contact him via sylvanoswald.xyz.
Faculty
Fabian Wagmister
VICE CHAIR, PRODUCTION; PROFESSOR
Fabian Wagmister is the founding director of the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP).
Wagmister’s current work focuses on alternative technological modes for collective creativity. He collaborates with diverse communities to generate reflexive media systems emphasizing cultural and locative specificity. In this context technology and culture converge into a performative social practice of investigation and expression.
He has focused much of his recent work at UCLA TFT on interpretive media systems for the Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) and the surrounding neighborhoods. In collaboration with the California Department of State Parks and Recreation, Wagmister created the Interpretive Media Laboratory @ LASHP (IMLab). In late 2014, Wagmister and his REMAP/IMLab teams debuted an immersive interpretive media environment for the new Welcome Center at the park.
Past projects include the mobile augmented reality application Skyline Traces (2012), the interactive installation Memoria Barrial (2012), and the neighborhood-scale expressive environment Navilandia Al Sur (2012).
Wagmister received his bachelor of arts degree in theater arts from UC Santa Cruz and his M.F.A. in film directing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Contact
- Office: 2327 Macgowan
- E-mail: fabian@ucla.edu
- Phone: 310-206-4431