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Faculty & Staff

Media and Cultural Studies faculty include media and film studies professors assigned to the department as well as professors in disciplines in the divisions of Humanities and Social Sciences and other interdisciplinary departments who teach cultural studies, film studies, humanities, and media studies. Faculty are engaged in active research programs that may offer opportunities for student assistance or collaboration.

MCS Faculty

Morgan Adamson
  • Morgan Adamson
  • Professor and Chair
  • Focuses on film and media theory, documentary and avant-garde cinema, critical theory and cultural studies, film and video production, and critical political economy
  • 651-696-6639
John Kim
  • John Kim
  • Associate Professor (On leave fall 23)
  • Is a theorist and practitioner of new media, who has published widely and created interactive installations and projects at museums and galleries around the world.
  • 651-696-6788
Tia-Simone Gardner
  • Tia-Simone Gardner
  • Assistant Professor (on sabbatical 23-24)
  • Is an artist, educator, and Black feminist scholar from Fairfield, Alabama. Working primarily with photography, moving-image, and drawing, her practice is deeply grounded in interdisciplinary strategies that activate ideas of ritual, iconoclasm, and geography.
Michael Griffin
  • Michael Griffin
  • Associate Professor (NTT)
  • Focuses on issues of representation in media, film and journalism. Publications address representation in visual journalism and documentary, and media treatments of social identity, community, environmental issues, and war and conflict.
  • 612-998-3512
Brad Stiffler
Howard Sinker
Katie Thornton

MCS Emeritus Faculty

Leola Johnson
Clay Steinman

MCS Staff

Jeremy Meckler
  • Jeremy Meckler
  • Department Coordinator, Media & Cultural Studies; Grant Coordinator & Editorial Manager, Mississippi River Open School for Kinship & Social Exchange
  • 651-696-6340
  • he/him/his

Contributing Faculty

A. Kiarina Kordela
  • A. Kiarina Kordela
  • Professor, German and Russian Studies
  • Director of the Critical Theory concentration, focuses on philosophy, intellectual history, critical political economy, psychoanalysis, comparative literature, political theory, film theory, and biopolitics
  • 651-696-6524
David Martyn
  • David Martyn
  • Professor, German and Russian Studies
  • Focuses on comparative literature, literary theory, culture from the 18th century to the present, philosophy, and literature written in German by “foreign”-language authors
  • 651-696-6547
David Chioni Moore
  • David Chioni Moore
  • Associate Professor, International Studies and English
  • Literary interactions in the Black Atlantic world, notably Africa, the Caribbean, and African America; post-colonial and/as the post-Soviet; comparative literature; cultural theory; globalization.
  • 651-696-6242
J. Andrew Overman
Khaldoun Samman
  • Khaldoun Samman
  • Professor of Sociology
  • Focuses on world historical-comparative and urban sociology, globalization, sociology of religion, and modes of identities in the Middle East
  • 651-696-6845
Sonita Sarker
  • Sonita Sarker
  • Professor Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English
  • Feminist and literary theories; cultural studies of globalization as it intersects with nationalism, democracy, and imperialism; “minoritized” literatures, with a transnational comparative basis in Western Europe and Asia.
  • 651-696-6316
Beth Severy-Hoven
Joëlle Vitiello
  • Joëlle Vitiello
  • Professor, French and Francophone Studies
  • Focuses on 20th-21st-century French and francophone literature and culture; Haitian literature and culture; French and Francophone Cinema; Postcolonial identities; Immigration; Violence in France and the francophone world.
  • 651-696-6412
James Von Geldern
  • James Von Geldern
  • Russian and International Studies, and Chair of Russian Studies
  • Russian and Soviet popular culture and cultural history; comparative studies in revolutions and commemoration; international law and legal frameworks; cultural studies.
  • 651-696-6568
Chris Wells
  • Chris Wells
  • Professor of Environmental Studies, Associate Director of the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching
  • Environmental history
  • 651-696-6803
Alix Johnson
  • Alix Johnson
  • Assistant Professor of International Studies
  • Digital infrastructure and information technology; spatial politics; surveillance; empire; ethnography
  • Carnegie 407