Recent and Ongoing PhDs

Recent Completed Dissertations

Zachary Zahos (2024)

“Meaning in the Margins: Boutique Distribution and the Contemporary Art House Film Market”
Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

David Vanden Bossche (2024)

Man and Camera become One – The First Twenty Years of Steadicam: Analyzing the influence of the Steadicam on camera movement in American Cinema (1974-94)

Erica Moulton (2023)

“From Bestseller to the Big Screen: The Acquisition and Development of Popular Novels in Classical Hollywood”
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Matt St. John (2023)

“United Slates: The Evolution of the American Film Festival System”
Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

JJ Bersch (2022)

“Pack Your Product’s Bags, It’s Going Hollywood: Explaining the Mainstream Emergence of Cinematic Product Placement in the 1980s”
Blank Check podcast

Luke Holmaas (2022)

“The Best Gag in the Picture: Gag-Based Comedy’s Adaptability in Blockbuster-Era Hollywood Cinema”

Hamidreza Nassiri (2022)

“Iranian Cinema in the Digital Era: The Implications of Digital Technologies on Local and Global Power Relations in Film and Media Industries”
Fordham University

Megan Boyd (2021)

“Legitimizing Laughter: The Rise of Feature Comedy”
University of Cincinnati

Maureen Rogers (2020)

“Getting in on the Act: How Exploitation Cinema Remade the New Hollywood (and Vice Versa)”
Shapiro & Raj

Jonah Horwitz (2019)

“Live Television Drama and Its Cinematic Legacies”
University of Pittsburgh

Nora Stone (2018)

“Marketing the Real: The Creation of a Multilayered Market for Documentary Cinema”
University of Alabama

Brandon Colvin (2018)

“Making It Real: Performance Styles and Contexts in Contemporary American Microbudget Cinema”
University of Alabama

Matt Connolly (2018)

“Underground Exploiteer: John Waters and the Development of a Directorial Brand, 1964-1981”
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Eric Dienstfrey (2018)

“The Stereo Impulse: High Fidelity Cinema and the Making of Modern Surround Sound Aesthetics”
Ursinus College

Derek Long (2017)

“Reprogramming the movies: distribution strategy and production planning in the early studio system, 1915-1924”
University of Illinois

Chelsea McCracken (2017)

“Riding the Gay New Wave into New Queer Cinema: revealing the contexts that created a movement”
State University of New York, Oneonta

Jenny Oyallon-Koloski (2017)

“An aesthetic of contradictions: Jacques Demy, Choreography, and the musical genre”
University of Illinois

Booth Wilson (2017)

“The most European cinema: Yakov Protazanov across borders, 1909-1930”
Shenzhen University, China

Amanda McQueen (2016)

“After ‘the Golden Age’: an industrial history of the Hollywood musical, 1955-1975”
New York University

John Powers (2016)

“Conjuror’s box: technology and aesthetics in postwar American avant-garde cinema”
Washington University in St. Louis

Andrea Comiskey (2015)

“The Sticks, the Nabes, and the Broadways: U.S. Film Distribution, 1935-1940”
Franklin & Marshall College

Heather Heckman (2014)

“Undervalued Stock: Eastman Color’s Innovation and Diffusion, 1900-1957”
University of South Carolina

Mark Minett (2013)

“Expanding the Standard Story: Rethinking ‘Early Altman’ and the Elaboration of Classical Hollywood Storytelling”
University of South Carolina