Leadership

Stephanie Spray is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where she also directs the Center for Ethnographic Media Arts. She is a filmmaker, anthropologist and educator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and art, with research interests in social aesthetics; visual, sonic, and media anthropology; conservation, climate change and the anthropology of science; and everyday religious practices. For many years in Nepal, she worked with itinerant musicians, known as the Gandharva or the Gāine, with whom she made five films and sound works, culminating in her feature-length film Manakamana (2013, co-directed with Pacho Velez), which won numerous awards, including two Golden Leopards at the Locarno International Film Festival and first prize at BAFICI, and was followed by a sustained theatrical release in the US, U.K., Canada, Germany, and Japan. She is currently working on a film with conservationists in the south of Chile. Dr. Spray earned her PhD in Social Anthropology with Media at Harvard University, a Master of Theological Studies in the study of religion from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Arts in the Study of Religion from Smith College.

Travis Levasseur is a multimedia artist who produces awkward moments through sight, sound, smell and touch. Travis has produced hybrid documentary films, shorts, music videos, multimedia installations, and television pilots that tell haunting, queer, dystopian stories, frequently leveraging comedy, and camp. His single-channel video work has been screened at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA, Macao Milano in Milan, IT, and the Borscht Film Festival in Miami, FL. His multimedia installations have been exhibited at Big Law Country Club in Brooklyn, NY, and Terrault Contemporary in Baltimore, MD. He has received fellowships for his work at the Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.  Travis currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA with his husband, two small dogs, and senile cat. In his free time, he likes to talk to electronics about their feelings.