UT RTF at SCMS 2025 Conference

This year in Chicago at the 2025 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference, RTF faculty, students, and alumni will convene to present their latest research, engage in critical dialogues on media studies topics, and network with regarded cinema and media scholars from around the world. 

We are thrilled to announce that RTF Professor Emeritus Janet Staiger will be receiving SCMS's 2025 Distinguished Career Achievement Award. The special tribute to her will take place on Saturday, April 5, from 2–3 PM CT. 

Also on that Saturday at 7:15 PM CT, SCMS will celebrate other 2025 SCMS award winners, including two from RTF: Maggie Steinhauer (PhD student), winner of a 2025 Distinguished Service Award, and Pete Johnson (PhD student), who took third place in the 2024 Student Writing Award competition. 

Scroll down the page to see many of the RTF-affiliated scholars who are presenting this year.

Party - Save the Date!

Please join the UT Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film on Friday, April 4, for our annual "Back to the Ranch" SCMS Reunion Party with graduate students, alumni, faculty and friends. Catch up and enjoy some light refreshments. We hope to see you there!

Hook 'em!

WHEN: Friday, April 4, at 9 pm
WHERE: TBA
RSVP

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UT RTF scholars scheduled to participate in 2025 SCMS Conference
(partial list)

Faculty  Students   Alumni

 

 

FACULTY

Mary Beltrán
I08 - Latinx Media Activism

• “Documenting Latinx Resilience: Survival in the 20th Century Media Industry as Activism” 

Marina Fontolan
F15 - (De)colonialism and Cinematic Politics

• “Decolonizing Lara Croft in Latin America: Towards a Decolonial Game Design”

Kathy Fuller-Seeley
B18 - Roundtable: The Movie Poster

•  “Austin Theaters’ Advertising in 1920s Newspapers”

Shanti Kumar
H13 - Roundtable: Global Histories of Streaming Media

• “The Rise of State-Owned Streaming Media”

Curran Nault
I24 - The Body, Sexuality, and Radical Performance in Conservative Times (Chair)

•  “Street Survivance: (Re)treading the Radical Roads of the (Paris) Street Queen”

Alisa Perren 
F26 - Roundtable: Historicizing the Present in Media Studies (Chair)

• “Reality TV Foundations in 1970s/80s Syndicated TV”

Charles Ramirez-Berg
B18 - Roundtable: The Movie Poster

• “How to Read a Movie Poster”

Laurel Rogers 
B14 - Age(ing) and Fandom in the Contemporary Media Landscape

• “Aging and/in Fandom: Fan Attachments and Practices over the Life Course”

Suzanne Scott 
B14 - Age(ing) and Fandom in the Contemporary Media Landscape

• “Geriatric Cosplay: Embodied Fan Practices and the Discursive Management of Aging”

STUDENTS

Fatima Bahja
I09 - Media, Politics, and the Middle East

• “Reading Gaza in The Hunger Games” 

Kristina Brüning
F12 - Of Dreamers and “Screamers”

•  “‘Just Shut Up and Say Your Lines!’: Early Career Actors, ‘Professional Conduct,’ and Agency as Privilege”

G11 - Cruel Productivity 2.0 (Chair)

Samuel Burton
G05 - Soundscapes in Film and Animation

•  “Backyard Cartoons: Marking Meaning, Identity, and Environment in Animated Television”

Yen Jen Chen
O03 - Queer, Queerness, and Its East Asian (in)Adaptability (Chair)

• “Tropical Feeling: Disrupting and Remapping Colonial and Imperial Narratives through Banana Buddha Performance”

Isadora Dumont
F15 - (De)colonialism and Cinematic Politics (Chair)

• “Indigenous Women Behind the Camera - Intermediality from Independent to Mainstream”

Ailish Elzy
O11 - Formations and Limitations of Genre

• “‘Message!’ Silliness as a Tool of Radical Resistance in the Black Satiric Mode”

Paxton Haven 
H11 - Sound Aesthetics Across Media

• “Locating Live Music’s Global Industry: Resident Advisor and the (Inter)Mediation of Local Music Scene Infrastructures”

Peter Arne Johnson
L04 - Strange Bedfellows (Chair)

• “Internalizing Finance: Managerialism & Banking in Network-Era Telefilm Production”

Soo Hee Kang
O03 - Queer, Queerness, and Its East Asian (in)Adaptability (Co-Chair)

• “Unpinnable Places: Seoul’s Undocumented Lesbian Nightlife and Absence in the Queer Archive”

Ann Laudick
P01 - Production Conditions, Platforms, and Distribution

• “Revealing Performance: The Closed Set in Public

Jina Lee
G10 - Televised Desires and Broadcasting Power

• “National Media in the Post-Media Imperialism Era: Nah PD’s Korean Web Series as a Micro Media Imperialism Force”

Mansa Narain
P10 - Producing Cinema Histories in Global Contexts

•  “Beyond Visibility: Evaluating the Impact of Amazon MGM Studios’ DEIA Policies in India”

Alex Remington
G06 - Specters Onscreen

• “Distributing Risk and Making Money in Network Era Local Programming, or How (Dis) Reputable Media Found its Light”

Laura Springman
C01 - Horror and Thrillers

• “Transnational Terror: Shudder and the Global Horror Genre”

Maggie Steinhauer
L04 - Strange Bedfellows

• “The Seeds of Agricultural Broadcasting: Unearthing USDA’s Radio Service as a Broadcasting Industry Stakeholder”

Dennis (Yifei) Sun
G22 - Media Theory in the Age of AI

• “The Authorship Problem of Generative AI: Opposing Definitions of Originality in Art and US Copyright Law”

ALUMNI

*If you're an alum presenting at this year's SCMS conference and are not listed below, please contact us!

Sophia Abbey
I22 - Televisual Mediations of the World

• “Reimagining Los Angeles: Mapping the Urban Landscape in Contemporary Television” 

Drew Ayers
G04 - The Impossible Image (Chair)

• “Extra-Ordinary Action Bodies: Disability, Aging, and VFX

Maria Suzanne Boyd

E17 - Badge and Screen

•  “Dedicated Detectives: The Precarious Exceptionalism of Law and Order: SVU”

Kevin John Bozelka
H09 - Roundtable: In Throes of Increasing Wonder with AMC’s Interview with the Vampire

• “The Stamina for Immortality: Music Cues and IWTV”

Alex Brannan
O06 - Post-Platform Cinephilia

•  “What’s a Film to a Platform?: Content Moderation, Online Archiving, and Taste Politics in the Case of The Movie Database”

Ash d’Harcourt
O05 - Festivals and Live Performances as Rearticulation/ Reclamation of Marginalized Identities

• “Oppositional Gazes: Indigiqueer Performers’ Reinterpretation of Media Stereotypes in Queer Nightlife and Performance”

Selena Ann Dickey
L04 - Strange Bedfellows

• “NBC, AT&T, and Converging Network Histories”

Evan Elkins
G15 - Negotiating the Local and the Transnational (Chair)

• “‘The Egyptian Is a Temple’: Netflix’s Projection of Power Through Cosmopolitan Moviegoing”

Hazem Fahmy
G13 - The Business of Distribution and Exhibition in the Digital Era

• “Epic Extraction: Landscape, Widescreen & Empire in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune”

F. Hollis Griffin
K09 - Buildings, Neighbors, & Apartments (Chair)

• “The Friends Experience: 90s-Era Sitcom Production Design as Gentrification Fantasy”

David Gurney 
A10 - New Approaches to Spectatorship

• “Uncanny Echoes: Skibidi Toilet, Hauntology, and the Fragmentation of Nostalgia for Generation Alpha”

Britta Hanson
K08 - Roundtable: Politicized Pedagogy

Jennifer Holt
F26 - Roundtable: Historicizing the Present in Media Studies

• “Analog Histories of Digital Cloud Infrastructure” 

Charlotte Howell
P16 - Distribution / Disposition (Chair)

Kit Hughes 
E11 - Roundtable: Useful Television (Chair)

• “The Chamber of Commerce and the Failure of BizNet”

Deborah Jaramillo
E15 - Transformative Recognition

• “The Mourning Show: ‘In Memoriam’ as Industry Death Ritual”

Jennifer Kang
I13 - Roundtable: Streaming Across Borders (Chair)

• “Korean Streamers and Global IP After Squid Game”

Jinsook Kim
H23 - Traveling Feminisms (Chair)

• “Inter-Asian Referencing and the 6B4T Movement: Traveling Feminism, Local Activism, and Transnational Solidarity”

Lily Kunda
E04 - Black Auto/Biographical Documentaries

• “Where is Wendy Williams? Aging, Agency, and the Right to Write Your Own Story”

Peter Kovacs
H10 - Midcentury Broadcasting

•  “Mapping the Derivatives of Broadcast Sponsorship: Philip Morris, Horace Heidt, and his Touring Orchestra”

Peter Kunze
A15 - Streaming Platforms

• “Segregated Streaming: Race, Distribution, and Disney+”

Kayti Lausch 
A15 - Streaming Platforms

• “Don’t Call It a ‘Faith Show’: The Chosen and Christian Television in the Streaming Age”

Sara Liao
H23 - Traveling Feminisms (Co-Chair)

• “Inter-Asian Referencing and the 6B4T Movement: Traveling Feminism, Local Activism, and Transnational Solidarity”

Amanda D. Lotz
B17 - Shifting Sector Strategies Outside the US (Chair)

• “Australia’s Scripted Series Collapse: A Cultural Policy Failure”

Anne Major
G15 - Negotiating the Local and the Transnational

• “‘We Can Dance with Anyone’: AMC Networks’ Evolving Strategies in the 2020s-era Streaming Landscape”

Alfred Martin
F04 - Distract Me, Comfort Me, Include Me, Hear Me (Chair)

•  “Media For Us: Black Reception Practices, The Wiz, and Canon Formation”

Nick Marx

D08 - Stand-Up Comedy

• “Cancel Capital: The Alternative Media Industry of Right-Wing Comedy”

Cynthia Meyers 
H10 - Midcentury Broadcasting (Chair)

• “Wanting More of a Voice in Programming: Sponsors and Program Control in Early 1960s TV”

Colleen Montgomery
G15 - Negotiating the Local and the Transnational

• “‘And I’ll Know Why the Maggots Love Mish’: Disney’s Diglossic Arabic Dubbing” 

Elissa H. Nelson
F09 - Lessons Learned

•  “Ideological Iterations: Remakes of Fairy Tales as Pedagogical Tool”

Matthew Payne
P19 - The Politics and Possibilities of GameTime (Chair)

• “Blink and You’ll Miss It: Feeling and Fighting Time in Before Your Eyes”

Timothy Piper
L04 - Strange Bedfellows

• “Squaring the Circle: Early Local Television and ‘Territory’ Professional Wrestling”

Swapnil Rai
F13 - Policy and Power

•  “Netflix as the ‘Voice of Tomorrow’: Parsing Gender and Soft Power Through the Lens of Diversity Policy and Initiatives”

M08 - Roundtable: Writing and Pitching a Successful Book Proposal (Chair)

Nathan Rossi 
P04 - New Media Futures

• “The Intersections of Race, Class, and AI: Developing a Critical AI Consciousness in Recent Film and TV”

Kevin Sanson
J11 - Accumulating Crisis and Organizing Resistance

• “Warning Signs and Distress Signals: Resetting Expectations for the Global Film and TV Industries”

R. Colin Tait
G12 - Roundtable: Navigating Archival Silences

• “Auctioning Off the Planet Hollywood Collection”

Alyxandra Vesey
O14 - “‘I (Still) Want my MTV!’

•  “Commentary Tracks: Pop-Up Video and the Rise of ‘Factoid TV’”

Latina Vidolova
K15 - Roundtable: Adapting Media Studies Pedagogy for Today’s Global Media Ecosystem

• “Tackling Global Streaming via Student-Fan Pedagogy”

Jing Wang
E10 - The Politics of Local Production and Global Circulation (Chair)

•  “Hibernation or Disintegration? The Impact of China’s 2017 Film Industry Promotion Law on Independent Documentary Culture”

Kristen Warner 
H09 - Roundtable: In Throes of Increasing Wonder with AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (Chair)

• “The Culturally Specific Blackening Inside IWTV”

Lesley Willard 
A11 - Political Economy of Games Now

• “Machine Learning, Moderation, and ToxMod: The Political Economy of AI Moderation Tools and Their Impacts on Game Workers”