2023:

• A journal publication: “Speakers for the Dead: Examining subalternity and the ‘stolen gaze’ in documentary film” (via Boston University’s Ampersand: An American Studies Journal).

  • This essay explores the political ramifications of documentaries that attempt to represent or speak for the dead, looking specifically at the work of Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence), Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man and Into the Abyss), and Stan Brakhage (The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes).

• My book review of Randy Astle’s Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952 (via Utah Historical Quarterly).

• A reprint of a 2006 book my grandmother wrote, for which I did the typesetting/editing: Legends and Folklore of Vietnam (self-printed on demand).

2020-2022:

• A book project I organized, edited, and co-wrote: Mormonism and the Movies (via BCC Press).

  • An anthology of essays about the ways in which film intersects with (or illustrates) crucial ideas, questions, and tensions in Mormon theology, culture, and history.

• A guest appearance I gave on a podcast, talking about the potentially transcendent or subversive aspects of watching film despite the pernicious power of ideology (via Kindness Rebellion).

• A video series I co-wrote, co-hosted, produced, and edited: The Research and (Dis)Information Series (via the Rhetoric Department and Libraries of the University of Iowa).

  • Intended as a pedagogical tool, primarily for rhetoric instructors to use in helping undergraduate students, but applicable in a variety of educational settings.

• “‘We’re Bringing These Guys Back to Life’: The Necromantic Ventriloquism of the Cinematic Apparatus” (a conference presentation I gave at “Spectre,” the 23rd Annual Film Studies Association of Canada Graduate Colloquium, hosted by the Cinema Studies Graduate Student Union; and co-sponsored by the University of Toronto, the Cinema Studies Institute, and the Film Studies Association of Canada).

  • An exploration of what it means—theoretically, technologically, discursively, and ethically—for filmmakers to resurrect images of the dead (for example the WWI soldiers in Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, or Peter Cushing’s character reanimated in the Star Wars spinoff Rogue One, etc.).

2016-2019:

• My Boston University MFA Thesis: “Now Is the Envy of All of the Dead: An Introduction to Don Hertzfeldt, the Animator” (via ProQuest).

• A podcast series I co-hosted: On the Other Side: Millennials and Religion (originally via the Open Stories Foundation).

• A book project (written by my grandmother) for which I did the typesetting/editing: Story of My Life (self-published).

A sampling of ongoing research (as-yet-unpublished papers for various grad seminars):

• “Digital Bodies: Stunts and Choreography in the Era of CGI” (for a Film Studies class called '“Film and Media in the Digital Age”).

• “Motioned Picture: the Ontology of Portraiture in Film” (for an English class called “The Long Media Century, Victorian to Modern”).

• “Into the Keanuverse: Keanu Reeves as an icon of our culture’s relationship to masculinity and race“ (for a Film Studies class called “Gender, Sexuality, and Cinema”).

• “Surviving, Together: Towards a Collectivist Ontology of Identity” (for a Philosophy class called “Can We Survive the Death of Our Bodies?”).

• “Alain Robbe-Grillet and the Left Bank” (for a Film Studies class called “Left Bank cinema”).

• “A Scorpion Imprisoned in Time“ (for a Film Studies class on Asian Cinema).

• “‘Until All of the Lights Go Out‘: Being and Time in It’s Such A Beautiful Day“ (for a Film Studies class called “Film Theory and Criticism”).

• “Sexuality, Machinery, and Masculinity in Gun Crazy“ (for a Film Studies class called “Gangster Film”).

• “THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE: The surrealism and terrorism of Buñuelian love” (for a Film Studies class called “Renoir/Buñuel“).

• “Damnation and Liberation in Albuquerque: Jesse Pinkman as the Spiritual Center of Breaking Bad“ (for an English class called “The Myth of the Family”).

Other:

To stay tuned for more publications/etc., feel free to follow me on Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and LinkedIn. And for more of my casual, informal, blog-like writing, feel free to follow my film reviews on Letterboxd. I used to have a non-film-related blog (hosted on this site), too, but for the now I have taken it offline. Someday, it might return.

You can download a PDF of my resume/CV here (updated April 2024).