USC.edu

Akira Lippit

University Professor, The T.C. Wang Family Endowed Chair in Cinematic Arts, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Cultures
Email lippit@usc.edu Office THH 376 Office Phone (213) 740-8508

Research & Practice Areas

History and theory of cinema, Japanese film and culture, experimental film and video, critical and literary theory, visual culture

Biography

Akira Mizuta Lippit is Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Cultures in the USC Dornsife College.  He is also Vice Dean of Faculty in the School of Cinematic Arts, and Professor in The Bryan Singer Division of Cinema and Media Studies.  His interests are in world cinemas, critical theory, Japanese film and culture, experimental film and video, and visual studies.

Lippit’s published work reflects these areas and includes four books, Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video (2012); Atomic Light (Shadow Optics)(2005); Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (2000); and his most recent book, Cinema without Reflection: Jacques Derrida’s Echopoiesis and Narcissism Adrift (2016).  At present, Lippit is completing a book on contemporary Japanese cinema, which explores the physical and metaphysical dimensions of the “world,” and another on David Lynch’s baroque alphabetics.

His work appears widely in journals and anthologies, and has been translated into Croatian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish.  He is past recipient of the Academy of Korean Studies, Japan Foundation, and Fulbright-Hays awards.

Lippit is active in the film community as a programmer, interviewer, and jury member, and has been deeply involved in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Visual History Project.  Lippit is Senior Editor of the journal Discourse and serves on the editorial board of Film Quarterly.  He regularly teaches, lectures, and publishes in Japan, where he is a founding editor of the visual culture journal Ecce.

  • Research Specialties

    History and theory of cinema, Japanese film and culture, experimental film and video, critical and literary theory, visual culture

  • Book

    • Lippit, A. M. (2016). Cinema without Reflection: Jacques Derrida’s Echopoiesis and Narcissism Adrift. University of Minnesota Press.
    • Lippit, A. M. (2012). Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video. University of California Press.
    • Lippit, A. M. (2005). Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). University of Minnesota Press.
    • Lippit, A. M. (2000). Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife. University of Minnesota Press.
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