Department of English
Peter Decherney
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities
Professor of Cinema & Media Studies
Director, Penn Global Documentary Institute
Peter Decherney is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, fine art photographer, and author. He holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute.
Peter is the author or editor of seven books including HOLLYWOOD’S COPYRIGHT WARS: FROM EDISON TO THE INTERNET and HOLLYWOOD: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION. He has also written for The New York Times, Forbes, and Inside Higher Ed, among many other publications.
His photographs of global Jewish communities have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and universities, and his book of photography, ENDLESS EXODUS: THE JEWISH EXPERIENCE IN ETHIOPIA is forthcoming.
Peter has made films about global migration, the political role of artists, and African Jewish communities. His virtual reality docuseries, THE HEART OF PUERTO RICO, about artists in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (co-directed with Jean Lee) won the Best VR Experience and Best Director awards at the AT&T Film Awards. His documentary, DREAMING OF JERUSALEM (co-directed with Sosena Solomon), about the Jewish community in Ethiopia, is a Discovery+ original. IS IT BECAUSE I’M A GIRL, about the South Sudanese Hip-Hop Dancer Nao.G, premiered at the Miami Film Festival and has won many top festival awards. He has also directed two award-winning documentaries about the Abayudaya Jewish communities in Uganda.
Films in production include a short about South African Yiddish Singer Leigh Nudelman and a documentary road movie about the Lemba Jewish community in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Peter has been an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy to Myanmar. He is an award-winning teacher, whose open online course on the history of Hollywood has enrolled more than 80,000 learners. He also holds a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication and an affiliation with the Penn Law Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition.
more at decherney.org
