Art History
Olivia Armandroff is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the department of Art History. She works on twentieth-century American art, with research interests that include the proliferation of imagery through printed materials, instances of collaborative production, and questions of space and the built environment. She holds a B.A. in the History of Art and History from Yale University and an M.A. in American Material Culture from the Winterthur Program.
Catherine Bedoya
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Cinema and Media Studies
Trace Cabot is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. His dissertation, tentatively titled Repetition and Disfigurement: The Shape of the Real in Classical Film and Animation Theory, focuses on the resonances and affinities between classical film and animation theory and contemporary Lacanian thought, locating the Real within the realism of Siegfried Kracauer, Dziga Vertov, Tosaka Jun, and others. He has a longstanding interest in Japanese and South Korean film, which form the bulk of his case studies both within his dissertation and other research. He was the organizer for Kumoricon Anime and Manga Studies in 2017 and the Anime Expo Academic Symposium in 2018. He served as a Research Associate at the Institute for Communication Arts and Technology and instructor at Hallym University in Chuncheon, South Korea from 2015-2016.
History
Art History
Courtney Carter is a doctoral student in the Department of Art History. She researches modern art and visual culture in the United States and Europe. Her particular interests are in the history and theory of photography, modern literature, inter-medial experimentation, and word/image relationships. Courtney received her B.A. in English Literature from Haverford College.
Danielle Charlap is a doctoral student in the Department of Art History. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century design and craft, with a focus on technological transformation and circulation in popular culture. Danielle is also interested in the history of collecting and exhibition practices and display strategies. Recent projects have involved Jet Age design, television history, and interior design instruction. Danielle holds a BA in History from Harvard and an MA in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center.
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Research Interests: South Korean cinema and popular culture, gender and queer studies, diaspora, new media, architecture and urban form.
Cinema and Media Studies
Corina Copp is a PhD student and Annenberg Fellow whose writing theorizes the wanderings or ‘lost/belated’ figurations in works across discipline of disparate moving-image women practitioners.
Research interests include avant-garde documentary and legacies of Deren’s ‘vertical cinema,’ militant activity in women’s narrative filmmaking, socialist-feminist video collectives, artist writings, theater and performance studies, couple-collaboration, script and print culture, memory studies, theories of migration/transnational feminism, translation studies, and intersections of political theory with nomadic subject-theory and anti-humanist/speculative frameworks.
She received her BA at Eugene Lang College in New York, and her MFA in Playwriting at Brooklyn College – CUNY.
Hana Cordero Rothstein
History
Darren Donate
English
Cinema and Media Studies
Debjani Dutta is a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Debjani Dutta’s research connects the aesthetic and philosophical concerns raised by the movement of the earth to the visual and avisual movements of cinema and media. Her work places the scientific instrument of the seismograph within the late 19th century landscape of media technologies that transformed sensory and spatio-temporal perception. She argues that the seismograph emerges as a medium for conducting the earth’s vibrations that bears close ties to the inscription and transmission media of photography, phonography and telegraphy.
Debjani received graduate training in Sociology and Film Studies from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
English
Nick Earhart is a PhD candidate in the English department. His dissertation is entitled “The Poetics of the Los Angeles River,” and Professor John Carlos Rowe (English) is his advisor. His work concerns the relationship between public art and urban planning. He is interested in the governmental embrace of the arts within the “creative city” and its impact on understandings of art’s social responsibility. Nick is currently on a Graduate School Fellowship from USC. He earned his BA from Wesleyan University and his MFA in fiction from Queens College.
Anna Flinchbaugh
American Studies & Ethnicity
Research Interests: Social Movements, Youth Activism, Chicano Movement, Gender and Sexuality, Latinx History, LGBT History, Oral History, Archival Analysis
BA Wellesley College, 10/2016
Jingyuan Fu
English
Comparative Media and Culture
Adam Gill is a doctoral student in Comparative Media and Culture. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from McGill University and a Master of Letters in Art History from the University of Glasgow. His research interests include continental philosophy, critical theory, queer theory, avant-gardes, as well as contemporary public and popular cultures. He is currently researching the night in modernity and the nocturnal’s relationship to aesthetics, technologies of illumination, media and literature.
Art History
Kathryn Griffith is a Provost Fellow and second-year PhD student in the Department of Art History, as well as a participant in the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate. She studies early modern Italy, and is particularly interested in how processes of translation, renovation, and restoration impact objects and histories. She is also interested in the history of the book and the history of museums and collections. Prior to USC, Kathryn earned an M.A. in History of Art from Williams College/Clark Art Institute and her B.A. from Wellesley College.
Pablo Obando Guzmán
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Pablo Obando Guzmán began his PhD in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture in the Fall of 2021. He is interested in what he understands is a tense and awkward present within Latin American literature as it is struggling with its own reconstruction through the emergence of new forms and themes, especially an increasing relationship with photography and the emergence of fútbol as a literary theme. Pablo’s prior degrees include a Literature BA and Literature MA from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
Britton Alexandra Hack
Cinema and Media Studies
Teddy Hamstra
English
Teddy is a PhD candidate currently working on a dissertation entitled “The Power of Mysticism: Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology & the Re-Enchantment of the Senses.” He was previously the Research Assistant for the Visual Studies Research Institute from 2021-2023 and an NEH-Images Out of Time Seminar Graduate Fellow. His research interests include representations of spiritual experience across media; the history of interdisciplinarity in American thought; theories of embodiment pertaining to shamanism, yoga, and dance; and self-help as a literary form. His writing has appeared in the ASAP/Journal, The Grateful Dead Studies Journal, and Air/Light. Teddy graduated with a B.A. in English, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2016, and received his M.A. from CU Boulder as well in 2019
Haley Hvdson
Lindsay Jolivette
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Lindsay is currently a PhD Candidate and began her work at USC in the Fall of 2017. Her dissertation is tentatively titled “Horrific Environments: Confronting the Nonhuman in Korean and Japanese Ecomedia” and Professor Youngmin Choe (EALC) is her advisor.
Lindsay’s research focuses on representations of the Nonhuman Other and ecological manifestations in contemporary South Korean and Japanese visual media, with a specialization in horror cinema. Her theoretical and methodological approaches include environmental history, visual studies and film studies, ecocriticism and eco-materiality, and folklore and monster studies.
Previous Degrees: Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC, Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, Awarded 2009; Minor – Gender Studies
Art History
Frances Lazare is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History. Her research interests are in 20th century American art, with particular focus on the histories of painting and abstraction. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “A Vanguard of Friends,” examines a network of creative communities and co-operative institutions in Post-WW II New York City. This project re-maps the intellectual terrain of the New York School, arguing for the importance of sociability, and collaboration as vital creative forces within its milieu. Paying particular attention to the experiences of gay men and women who traveled in this sphere, her dissertation probes the tension between art and life and the need for creative community. Frances holds B.A., with distinction, in art history from Smith College.
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Hyejoo is a Ph.D. student in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures. Her research interests include modern and contemporary South Korean film and media, new media, visual culture, and gender. She holds an M.A. from Harvard University in Regional Studies – East Asia and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Culture from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.
American Studies and Ethnicity
Rocio’s research interests include Spanish-language media, Latinx digital culture, Globalization, Race and Ethnicity. Previous degrees include MA Purdue Univ West Lafayette, 2018, and BA Oberlin College, 2013.
Myles Little is a PhD candidate in Art History studying Photography History. His dissertation is entitled, “Blackout: Photography, Darkness and New York City, 1965-1985,” and Vanessa R. Schwartz is his advisor. He also holds a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design, 2008.
Chloe Luu
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Religion
April began her career as a professor of documentary film in the Theatre & Media Arts Department at Brigham Young University. During this time she produced and directed several award-winning films exploring religious themes. In 2006 April left academia to pursue production full-time with National Geographic Television in Washington DC. Over a period of seven years, she produced hundreds of hours of television for National Geographic Television. A desire to study religion and media led April to USC where she is currently a doctoral student in Comparative Christianities. Her research interests within religion include media studies, cultural studies, and race, ethnicity and gender studies.
Art History
Weronika Malek-Lubawski is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History. Her research focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century European art, especially the place of figuration within modernism. Weronika’s current interests concern the engagement of visual media with class, gender, and social issues in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire. She is also interested in the role of mythologies, folk traditions, and religions in the construction of national visual identities. Weronika earned an M.A. in Humanities at the University of Chicago and a B.F.A. with an emphasis in art history and painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Religion
Born and raised in Southern California, Nathan earned a B.A. in Literature and Writing Studies, with a special focus in creative writing, from Cal State San Marcos. On track to becoming a Catholic priest, Nathan studied philosophy in residence at the University of San Diego, then theology at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon where he earned an M.A. in systematic theology and an M.Div. His research focused on the religious philosophy of John Hick. Having stepped away from the priesthood on good terms, Nathan studies American Religious History, with a special focus on religion and environmental thought from the mid 19th century to the present day.
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Lillian Ngan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her research interests include Sinophone and modern Chinese literature, Hong Kong-Vietnam cultural relations, transpacific studies, racial misrepresentation, and language politics. She has received USC Visual Studies Graduate Certificate Summer Research Grants, USC East Asian Studies Center Fellowship, USC Graduate School Summer Research and Writing Grants, USC The Center for Transpacific Studies Transpacific Research Funding, and her previous degree was an MA in East Asian Studies at University of Alberta.
Nisarg Patel
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Nisarg Patel [નિસર્ગ પટેલ] is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture program at USC (joined 2021). A South Asianist by training, he works at the intersections of 20th-century continental thought and the histories of visual cultures of late-colonial and post-colonial India. Before USC, Nisarg’s academic training consists of: B.E. Production Engineering, GTU (2016); B.A. Philosophy, IGNOU (2016); B.A. English Literature and Cinema Studies, University of Toronto (2019); M.A. Comparative Literature w. focus on South Asian Studies, University of Toronto (2020).
Brodie Quinn
Anthropology
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Currently, Mahmoud is a doctoral student in the Comparative Literature Track of the PhD program in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture (CSLC) at USC, investigating what could be seen as dystopian and/or apocalyptic in world literature, cinema and photography from an ecocriticism lens with main focus on making connections between Middle East and Latin American in the context of Global South.
His research interests include: Translation Studies and Multilingualism, Visual Studies and Media Theory, Literary Theory, Psychoanalytic Theory, Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities in Global South, Dystopia and Apocalypse in World Cinema and Literature, Contemporary Arabic Literature and Art, and Middle Eastern Studies.
Cinema and Media Studies
ZEKE SABER is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California (USC). His research limns the discursive contours of post-cinematic scholarship – whenever it happened to be produced. His areas of focus include filmic realism, metaphor theory, epistolarity, and immersive technology. Zeke’s work has been published in Cinephile and Film & History.
Advisor: Akira Lippit
Tania Sarfraz
Cinema and Media Studies
Joe Semkiu is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Art History. He studies nineteenth– and twentieth–century American art, with an emphasis on American modernism, focusing on issues of gender, race, sexuality, advertising, and mass media culture. Current research interests include the American Surrealist and magic realist movements, in particular the work of John Atherton, Jared French, O. Louis Guglielmi, and Dorothea Tanning, among others. Joe holds a B.A. in art history and Italian from Northwestern University and an M.A. in art history from Tufts University. He has worked at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.Honors and Awards:
Robert C. Vose Jr. and Ann Peterson Vose Scholarship for the Study of American Art History, The Copley Society of Art, 2018.
Rhonda Saad Award Graduate Prize in Art History, Tufts University, 2018.
Kirsten Seuffert is a PhD student in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She previously received an MA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2016. Her research interests include Japanese postwar cinema and visual culture, East Asian and transnational cinema, film and media theory, gender and sexuality studies, affect, and performance studies. Her current research focuses on the intersection between the body, the image, and resistance (loosely defined) in Japanese cinema and visual culture from the mid-1970s through the 1980s with particular interest in underrepresented genres, subgenres, creators, and media forms.Honors and Awards
Nippon Foundation Fellowship, Stanford University, Academic Year 2018–2019
Art History
Audrey Storm is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Art History. She studies American art and visual culture from the late nineteenth century to the contemporary with a focus on the North American West and the Transpacific, encompassing questions of place, nature, technology, race, and empire. Prior to joining the department, she held internships at Bonhams, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Asian American Arts Alliance. She also was a studio assistant for the artist Titus Kaphar. She holds a BA from Yale University in History of Art and Economics, where her undergraduate thesis won the Vincent D. Andrus Memorial Prize.
American Studies and Ethnicity
Suiyi Tang is a PhD student in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Her research traces the figure of the yellow woman within post-1945 U.S. imperial culture, underscoring the discursive evolution of this figure’s political agency against the parallactic formations of U.S. warfare and democratization.
Prior to USC, she graduated magna cum laude from Williams College and holds an MPhil in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge, where she was also the Bell Scholar.
Meg Tiller began her PhD in 2019, and her advisor is Diane Winston. The working title of Meg’s dissertation is “Out of the Habit: The Politics of Fashion for American Nuns, 1900-1969,” and her research interests are the intersections of religion, politics, and popular culture in the United States, with a particular interest in the politics of fashion and the body in a capitalistic society. Previous degrees: English B.A., concentration British Gothic Literature, dual degree in Religious Studies and American Studies (all from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Ekaterina Tomashevskaia’s academic interests focus on early and late twentieth-century Russian literature, cinema and theater. The ways of cross-fertilization between Russian Literature, Cinema and Ideology are of great concern to her. Prior degrees include: M.A. Comparative Literature, Higher School of Economics, 2020 ; Exchange Programme Comparative Literature, University of Helsinki, 2020 ; Certificate Gender Studies, Higher School of Economics, 2019 ; Certificate , Universität Bremen, 2019 ; B.A. Russian, St. Petersburg State University, 2017
Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Elsa Vallot is a PhD Student in the french and francophone track, specialized in critical theory. She received her B.A in Public Law from the university of Panthéon-Sorbonne, and her M.A in Humanities and Social Sciences, theory and practices of language and art from the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She in interested in french and american hip-hop, francophone poetry, gender and race phenomenology, radical philosophy and politics, materialism. She writes about hardcore rap and gangsta rap, interracial alterity in France and the Indian Ocean. She is starting a project on Muay Thay fighters in France.
Art History
Dora Vanette is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History. She works on twentieth-century architecture and design, with a focus on the material culture of childhood and old age. Recent projects include the history of special education school architecture and the visual culture of age-restricted retirement communities. She has taught courses in design and architecture history at Parsons School of Design and School of Visual Arts, New York. She holds MA degrees from the University of Zagreb, Croatia and the New School.
American Studies and Ethnicity
Jason Tuan Vu (he/they) is a first-year PhD student and Provost Fellow in the American Studies and Ethnicity Department at USC. His research interrogates the intersections of settler colonialism, militarism, and carcerality in the formation of global US empire. By engaging with the issue of Southeast Asian refugee deportation, he aims to chart a critical transpacific geography that links settler-military infrastructures to expanding US carceral power. In doing so, he hopes to bring Indigenous and refugee critiques of US empire into closer conversation, pointing toward resonant histories and potential futures of solidarity and resistance.
B.A. Ethnic Studies, University of California Los Angeles, 06/2021
El Whittingham
Anthropology
El Whittingham is a 2nd year PhD student in the Anthropology Department. Their current research and films focus on queer kinship , community building and activism in the Francophone African Sahel, particularly in Senegalese urban spaces. Their focus on visual anthropology allows them to engage in collaborative projects with queer Senegalese filmmakers, artists and activists. Queer religious leaders and national Senegalese holidays that permit gender divergence through expression are at the current forefront of their research focus. They are also interested in French colonial archives from the late 19th and early 20th centuries with a particular focus on gender and sexuality. El graduated with B.As in French Studies and Spanish Studies from the University of Washington in 2016 and an M.A. in French Studies from UW Seattle in 2018.
Art History
Jessica Williams is a Ralph and Jean Hovel Fellow and fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Art History, as well as a recipient of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate. She received her BA in art history from Duke University, where she graduated summa cum laude. Her research focuses on the trajectory of sports photography in the twentieth century, particularly in the mass media environments of France, Germany and the United States. Prior to joining the department at USC, Jessica was an education intern at the Timken Museum of Art and a team leader for the international Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database. She was awarded a Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship to complete her undergraduate honors thesis, entitled The Historiography of Italian Gothic Architecture.
Ka Lee Wong
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Ka Lee Wong’s research concerns Chinese languages and cultures in the transnational context, particularly issues concerning global Chinese diaspora, media production and circulation, internet culture, censorship and language politics. While my dissertation focuses on an inter-Asia network in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia where individuals imagine and assert a Cantonese identity through a sense of “vulgarity” in language and popular culture, in my next book project, Cantonese Sea Gypsies, Mermen and Pirates: Reimagining Languages and Identities in the Inter-Asia Oceans (working title), I aim to sharpen the emphasis on theorizing the transnational Cantonese language studies by exploring the connections between the existing island and ocean studies around the world and Inter-Asia.
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Kaiyang’s research interests are contemporary Chinese cinema and media studies, subaltern studies, space studies, and transnational cinema. BA , Nankai Univ., 6/2017
