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Karen Redrobe

Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Cinema and Modern Media

Curriculum Vitae

Office Hours

ON SABBATICAL JULY 1, 2021 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2022

Karen Redrobe is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Cinema and Modern Media. She has served as Department Chair of History of Art, Director of the Wolf Humanities Center, Director of the Program in Cinema and Media Studies, and Advisor to the Arts for the University. She is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism (Duke UP, 2003); Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis (Duke UP, 2010), and is now working on a new book, Undead: Animation and the Contemporary Art of War (under contract with University of California Press's Feminist Media History series). She has co-edited three volumes: Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography with Jean Ma (Duke UP, September 2008) and On Writing With Photography (Minnesota UP, 2013) with Liliane Weissberg, and Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures with Jeff Scheible (Minnesota UP, March 2021); she is also the editor of Animating Film Theory (Duke UP, 2014), which explores the history of film theory's engagement (and lack of it) with animation: https://scribd.com/document/205208690/Animating-Film-Theory-edited-by-Karen-Bedkman. As a faculty member, her top priority is to expand access to higher education. Her articles address a range of subjects, including the evolving role of film theory in the 21st century, war and the academy, violence and media, community media, animation and experimental film, feminism and terrorism, death penalty photography, the relationship between cinema and contemporary art, and cinematic tempo. For several years she served as a senior editor of the MIT journal Grey Room and is now a member of its editorial board. She has also served on PMLA advisory board. She is on the Board of Directors for Scribe Video Center, a media center for social change founded in 1982 by Louis Massiah. Courses include: Reading Against Racism; African Film and Media; Global Film Theory; Cinema and Civil Rights; Introduction to Film Theory; The Place of Film Theory; The Art of Animation; War and Film (Afghanistan and Iraq); Art and Resistance; Cinema and Photography; Race, Sex and Gender in Early Cinema; Women and Film; Film History; The Road Movie; and Paul Strand. She is a core faculty member in the Cinema and Media Studies program; a member of graduate groups in the departments of Comparative Literature, English, and German; a member of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; a faculty affiliate of the LGBT center; and a First-Generation/Low-Income (FGLI) Student ally.

Publications

Doctoral Dissertations Chaired

2023

Joseph Coppola "Not Your Average Joe: Hollywood’s Data Wars"
Dahlia Menghui Li "Caress without Body: Stranded Affect, Queer Diasporic Dancing, and Questions Concerning Technology"
jess lrh "Psychologically Ultimate Background: the Environmental Politics of Ambient Media"

Courses Taught

spring 2023

ENGL 2900.401 Global Film Theory  

fall 2022

spring 2021

ENGL 305.401 Global Film Theory  

spring 2020

spring 2019

ENGL 305.401 Global Film Theory  

spring 2018

ENGL 305.401 Global Film Theory  
ENGL 596.401 Art and Resistance  

spring 2017

ENGL 301.401 Cinema and Civil Rights  

spring 2016

spring 2014

ENGL 797.401 War and Film  

fall 2011

ENGL 797.401 The Art of Animation  

spring 2010

spring 2009

ENGL 095.401 Intro to Film Theory  
ENGL 591.401 Reading Gilles Deleuze  

spring 2008

ENGL 392.401 Cinema and Photography  

fall 2007

summer 2007

ENGL 061.950 British Cinema  

fall 2005

ENGL 091.401 Film History