IMS Faculty
Core IMS Faculty
James Morrison, CMC
Professor of Literature
Office: Roberts South 214
(909) 607-9678
[email protected]
James Morrison has a Ph.D in English from State University of New York at Buffalo. He has taught at North Carolina State University and Wayne State University prior to joining the Literature Department at Claremont McKenna College. Morrison’s classes on film theory and film history reflect his interested in the relation of popular to modernist and/or avant-garde forms; in turn, this concern spurs an interest in the operations of modern cultural institutions as systems, and in how these systems close or open themselves to one another, in how fields of cultural production that are contiguous attempt to construct themselves as distinct, opposed or mutually exclusive, and in the kinds of cultural objects that are produced both by such efforts and by their seemingly inevitable tendencies to break down. His research principally considers film as medium and art in the contexts of modernity and post-modernity.
Rachel Mayeri, HMC
Professor of Media Studies
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Harvey Mudd College
Office: Parsons 1249
(909) 607-0461
[email protected]
on leave Fall 2022
Rachel Mayeri has an MFA in Visual Arts from UC San Diego, and joined the faculty of Harvey Mudd College in 2002. She is a Los Angeles-based media artist working at the intersection of science and art. Her projects explore topics ranging from the history of special effects to the human animal. She is interested in video as a communication technology situated between scientific observation and artistic imagination.
Gina Lamb, PZ
Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies
Office: West Hall Q123
(909) 607-7952
[email protected]
Gina Lamb is a Los Angeles artist /activist/teacher who has worked collaboratively with inner city youth for the past 25 years to foster their voices/vision through independent media arts production. She has taught for the past 23 years in Media Studies at Pitzer College. She teaches courses on community engagement and media activism in courses such as MS194: Media Arts for Social Justice, where students participate in ongoing media collaborations with local non-profit organizations including REACH LA, Girls and Gangs, Organization en California de Lideres Campesinas, Camp Afflerbaugh-Paige, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Transgender Youth Program, TransLatina Coalition, Pomona Habla, Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, Warehouse Workers United, Girls Scouts/Westland Estates, The Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe of Ohlone People, Sherman Indian High School, and many other sites.
Jesse Lerner, PZ
Professor of Media Studies
Office: Scott 208
(909) 607-2636
[email protected]
Jesse Lerner has an M.A. in Visual Anthropology from USC and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from CGU. He has taught at UC San Diego, CalArts, and the San Carlos Academy of Mexico’s National University (UNAM). Lerner’s classes on documentary, media production, silent film, and Mexican visual cultures generally involve both an element of media theory and history and an element of hands-on practice.
Ming-Yuen S. Ma, PZ
Professor of Media Studies
Office: West Hall Q123 / Scott Hall 213
(909) 607-4319
[email protected]
Ming-Yuen S. Ma teaches courses in sound culture, experimental media, video, as well as feminist and queer issues in production, theory, and history. Ma is also a core faculty in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies (IDAAS) at the Claremont Colleges. He has an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts, and has taught at University of California Irvine, Riverside, and Santa Barbara. He is the co-editor (with Alexandra Juhasz) of the Moving Image Review of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Resolutions 3: Global Networks of Video (with Erika Suderburg, University of Minnesota Press, 2012). His experimental videos and installations, including the ReCut Project (2006), THIS IS NOT A FOREIGN FILM (2002), Xin Lu Project (1997-present), Sniff (1997), Slanted Vision (1995), and Toc Storee (1992) have shown national and internationally. These works explored issues including travel and migration, language and translation, autobiography, and the representation of race and sexuality through a queer Asian perspective.
Ruti Talmor, PZ
Associate Professor of Media Studies
Office: Bernard 206
(909) 607-5003
[email protected]
Ruti Talmor came to Pitzer in 2011 from Haverford College, where she was the 2009-2011 Mellon Fellow. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from New York University. Drawing on her training in anthropology and her background in art and documentary film, Talmor’s research, production, and pedagogy combine visual, oral, and archival history with ethnographic methodologies. Her courses combine anthropological, art and media theory, colonial and postcolonial history, and ethnographic and visual methods, first modeling new ways of thinking, writing and working for students and then allowing them to produce work in this new vein themselves.
Ryan Engley, PO
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
on leave 2022-2023 academic year
Engley’s dissertation, To Be Continued: Serial Storytelling in New Narrative Media examines the intersection of psychoanalysis and contemporary serial media. His work has appeared in The Serial Podcast and Storytelling in the Digital Age, Can Philosophy Love? Reflections and Encounters, The International Journal of Žižek Studies, and Cinematic Cuts: Theorizing Film Endings.
Jennifer Friedlander, PO
Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor, Chair
Department of Media Studies
Office: Crookshank 6
(909) 607-9196
[email protected]
Jennifer Friedlander received a Ph.D. in Communication and a Ph.D. Certificate in Cultural Studies from University of Pittsburgh. She is the Edgar E. and Elizabeth S. Pankey Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College. She is the author of Moving Pictures: Where the Police, the Press, and the Art Image Meet (Sheffield Hallam University Press, 1998); Feminine Look: Sexuation, Spectatorship, and Subversion (State University of New York Press, 2008); and Real Deceptions: The Contemporary Reinvention of Realism (Oxford University Press, 2017). She has published articles in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture; CiNéMAS: Journal of Film Studies; Subjectivity; (Re)-turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies; Journal for Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society; Subjectivity; and International Journal of Žižek Studies and in several edited volumes. She is a founding and central committee member of LACK and the 2021 Fulbright-Freud Visiting Scholar at the Freud Museum Vienna.
Kevin Wynter, PO
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
Kevin Wynter is a film and media scholar whose research on the history and theory of the moving image is informed by interdisciplinary training in film and media studies, critical theory. and continental philosophy. He focuses on body genres and contemporary European art cinema, screen histories of race and representation, psychoanalytic theory, and black popular culture. At the core of his work is a concern with relationality, both as a problem reflected in structures of violence (institutional, ideological, psychical) on screen, and in a more theoretical and political vein, as an issue of paramount importance in an increasingly networked and technological world.
Nancy Macko, SC
Professor of Art
Office: Lang 213
(909) 607-3628
[email protected]
Nancy Macko has an M.F.A. in Painting/Printmaking from University of California, Berkeley. A practicing artist since the early 1980s, she has produced over 20 solo exhibitions and participating in over 150 exhibitions both nationally and abroad. Until recently, she combined elements of painting, printmaking, digital media, photography, video, and installation to create a unique visual language, which allowed her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism, nature, and the importance of ancient matriarchal cultures, as well as her interest in mathematics, and to make explicit the implicit connections between nature and technology.
Aly Ogasian, SC
Assistant Professor of Art
Lang 221
In her work, Aly attempts to re-orient herself in a contemporary world dominated by data and technology, where the romantic and adventurous spirit of discovery has been lost or forgotten. In these zones, science and technology give rise to the nebulous, the enigmatic, the mysterious — the primary goal is to “make sense” rather than to objectively know.
Rather than grapple with the “polarity” between the arts and sciences, her work argues that both fields operate in a territory of wonder that exists at the border between sensation and thought. Within this context, wonder is connected to an instance of “new knowing”, a re-encountering of familiar terrain. Her recent work pairs artistic fieldwork with public programs that engage communities around issues of climate change, histories of land use, and environmental stewardship.
She has been awarded residencies at Montalvo Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, School of Visual Arts, The Arctic Circle, and the National Center of Contemporary for Art: Russia, amongst others. In 2019 Ogasian was an artist in residence at Schmidt Ocean Institute aboard the Research Vessel Falkor departing from Hawaii. In 2018, Ogasian and her collaborator, Shona Kitchen were awarded the first ever artist residency at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Cape Canaveral, Florida, supported by a NASA Space Grant.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as The Russian State Arctic & Antarctic Museum; The Atlantic Center of the Arts; Kennedy Space Center/Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge; The Salamanca Arts Center Tasmania; Watkins College of Art, Design & Film and ISEA, amongst others. Aly has also co-curated a group exhibition at apexart, NYC, and has collaboratively produced artist books.
T. Kim-Trang Tran, SC
Professor of Art
Office: Lang 215
(909) 607-4438
[email protected]
T. Kim-Trang Tran has an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. She has been a media artist since the early 1990s, then producing a body of short video essays on the theme of blindness that has enabled her to incorporate multiple practices (writing, performance, video production) and realize new approaches. Tran’s work relies on research related to social issues, theories, or concepts that also engage in conceptualizing and testing the boundaries of form, genre, and content while integrating them. Currently, she is prototyping a casual game for mobile devices about immigration, gun violence, and gaming called Arizona 9.
Carlin Wing, SC
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
Office: Baxter 103
(909) 607 4218
Carlin Wing teaches courses in the history, theory, and practice of media and art. She received an MFA in Photography and Media from CalArts and a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. In her work as an artist and scholar, she employs a variety of media and forms including large format photography, experimental video, sound works, site specific installations, performance lectures, and theoretical writing. Her areas of interest include media and communication; games, sport, and play; technologies and the body; performance; and injury and disability. Her writing has appeared in Games and Culture, Public Books, Cabinet, Art Lies, and The Bulletin of the Serving Library.
Visiting Faculty
Kouross Esmaeli, PZ
Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies
228 Fletcher Hall
Kouross Esmaeli is a researcher, educator, and documentary filmmaker teaching courses in multi-media production, media ethnography, and critical media analysis. His medium and short-form documentaries have been shown on Aljazeera, Press TV, Democracy Now, and Current TV. Kouross received his MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University, and his PhD from NYU’s Department of Media, Communication & Culture. His dissertation and upcoming book, Testing Technology: Digital Mediation of Education in New York City, is an ethnographic study of the NYC public schools and the effects of the integration of digital educational technologies on teachers’ labor and students’ schooling
Ann Kaneko, PZ
Visiting Assistant Professor
West Hall, Q123
Independent filmmaker Ann Kaneko is known for her personal essay videos and films that confer documentary subjects with personal insights. She weaves her intimate aesthetic with the complex intricacies of political reality. Often involving subjects in other parts of the world, Kaneko poetically probes the intersection where power impacts the personal. Her films have screened internationally at numerous festivals, and she has been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Getty Center. Kaneko has been a Fulbright and Japan Foundation Artist fellow and graduated with an MFA in film directing from UCLA.
