Eric A. Pitz is a PhD candidate in cinema and media studies researching the history of the Fleischer animation studio, analyzing the studio’s shift away from vaudeville and jazz-derived sensibilities and aesthetics from the 1920s until Paramount Pictures’ takeover of the studio in 1942. To do so, he is examining the studio’s technological innovations in conjunction with its utilization of Black, Jewish, and immigrant performers and performances, as well as the studio’s move from New York City to Miami and their attempts to compete with Disney.
Other areas of research include moments of transition within the Hollywood film industry (in particular that of silent to sound cinema), histories of American film censorship, and genre filmmaking on the peripheries of Hollywood. Pitz currently serves as graduate student representative for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies’ Classical Hollywood Scholarly Interest Group, and has served twice as graduate student representative for UCLA’s cinema and media studies program. In addition to his research in cinema and media studies, he is working on a graduate certificate in English writing pedagogy.
Pitz’s work has been accepted for presentation at conferences put on by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Popular Culture Association, the Society for Animation Studies, and the American Studies Association. He has previously been awarded the Teshome Gabriel Memorial Award, the Kemp R. Niver Scholarship in Film History and the Anna & Rich Lundin Summer Research Fellowship, in addition to several grants to present at conferences. Beyond his work as an academic, Pitz has worked with the Highland Park Film Festival, the Fresh Coast Film Festival, and the Sherman Grinberg Film Library.
Research and Creative Interests
Media industries, American film history (silent and classical Hollywood cinema), vaudeville and early recording industry, film genres (comedy), animation studies, race and ethnicity, convergence culture, gender and sexuality studies, film censorship, American independent cinema
Selected Work and Awards
Pitz, Eric A. “Giant Ads for a Giant Lad: The Failure of Marketing Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (1939).” Paper presented at the Gulliver’s Travels at 300 – The Global Afterlives of a Bestseller in Print, Transmedial Adaptations, and Material Culture: ILLUSTR4TIO Annual Conference (London, England: September 2026).
Pitz, Eric A. “Beavers and Rabbits and Wolves, Oh My! Playing with Process in Hundreds of Beavers (2022).” Paper presented at the University of California, Santa Barbara Graduate Center for Literary Research Conference: Humor, Comedy, and Play in Times of Crisis (Santa Barbara, CA: May 2026).
Pitz, Eric A. “Considering Cab Calloway: The Fleischer Studios’ Minnie the Moocher and Rotoscoping Black Performance.” Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference (Chicago, IL: March 2026).
Teshome Gabriel Memorial Award (UCLA, 2026)
Kemp R. Niver Scholarship in Film History (UCLA, 2024)
Education
PhD, Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA (in progress)
MA, Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA
BA, English and Spanish, Northern Michigan University