Who are the faculty and what research is done at UW Cinema & Media Studies?

UW Cinema & Media Studies describes its faculty as an award-winning group "committed to excellence in teaching, research, and mentorship." The department's research spans world cinema, literature, and television, and its scholarship appears in edited collections and journals such as Feminist Media Histories. If you want to identify a specific professor or check current research interests, the department's Faculty Directory is the authoritative starting point; the site also surfaces a Faculty Bookshelf and Faculty Spotlights.

What the department says about its faculty

The department's own framing is brief but specific:

• Award-winning faculty — the site states that faculty are recognized with awards.
• Three commitments — teaching, research, and mentorship are named together, which matters if you are choosing a program partly on advising quality.
• Mentorship is explicit — this is stated at the department level, not just as an individual claim, so it is reasonable to ask about it when you contact faculty or visit.

The site does not publish faculty-to-student ratios, individual award names, or a full research-area taxonomy on the page evidence available here. For those details, use the Faculty Directory and individual faculty pages.

Research areas visible from the department's own materials

The department describes graduate study as exploring "world cinema, literature, television and more." That is the broadest statement of research scope on the page. Beyond it, the concrete signals come from named publications and a featured course:

Two cautions about reading this table. First, the Faculty Bookshelf is a sample, not a complete publication list — absence from it does not mean a faculty member publishes less. Second, the featured course is one example of teaching coverage, not a statement that Indian cinema is a departmental specialty.

How to check a specific faculty member's research

Because the department does not publish a single consolidated research-areas page in the available evidence, work from the directory outward:

1. Open the Faculty Directory from the department site.
2. Select a faculty member and look for their listed research interests, recent publications, and courses.
3. Cross-check the Faculty Bookshelf for books and edited journal issues, which often reveal long-running projects better than a short bio does.
4. Check the Courses listing for the terms a person teaches — teaching areas and research areas usually overlap but are not identical.
5. For graduate applicants, use the Graduate Studies program pages to see which faculty are affiliated with the MA, PhD, and graduate certificate.

Expected result: you should be able to name two or three faculty whose work matches your interest, and cite a specific publication or course rather than a general area. If you cannot, the fit may be weaker than the department's broad description suggests.

Common sticking points

• "World cinema, literature, television" is very broad. Treat it as a range, not a promise that every subfield is covered. Verify the specific region, genre, or method you care about against individual faculty pages.
• The Bookshelf is not a CV. It highlights selected titles. For a full record, look for a personal or department profile page.
• Journal issues can have multiple editors. In the Feminist Media Histories entries, Jennifer M. Bean appears alongside different co-editors (Xin Peng, Cain Miller), so credit and role may vary by issue.
• Course offerings change by term. A featured course for a future term indicates teaching capacity, not a permanent catalog commitment.

Where to go next

• Faculty Directory — for names, profiles, and contact routes.
• Faculty Spotlights — for shorter profiles of individual faculty.
• Faculty Bookshelf — for books and edited journal volumes.
• Graduate Studies — for MA, PhD, and certificate program structure and faculty affiliation.
• Courses — for current and upcoming teaching offerings.

If your goal is to decide whether to apply or to approach a potential advisor, the most reliable sequence is: read two or three faculty profiles in full, note one specific publication or course for each, then reach out with a question tied to that work rather than a general expression of interest.