Sarah Mae Fleming

Sarah Mae Fleming is a Film Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Arts. She focuses on sound and music in film studies with an emphasis on cognitivism. Her work has investigated the ways in which sound and music work to develop narrative comprehension and character alignment. Sarah Mae is also working on a project about the history of punk rock filmmaking and archiving.

Conference Presentations: 

• 2023 – SCSMI, “Close your eyes, close ‘em: Sound, Music, and Accessing Difficult Characters on Screen”
• 2023 – MaMI, “Looping into the Mind: Audiovisual Aesthetics and Narrative Comprehension in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
• 2019 – SCMS-U, “You see, my wife’s dad is real well off: Money Obscured in the Coen Brothers”
• 2018 – SCMS-U, “There Will Be Oil: The Celebration and Inevitability of Petroleum through Upton Sinclair and Paul Thomas Anderson”

Honors/Awards:

• Robert J. Wickhem Award in Media Production, 2023
• Sharon Sites Award, 2022

Education:

• M.A. with Distinction – Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2023
• B.A. – English/Film Studies, Rhode Island College, 2019

Courses:

• CA 100 – Introduction to Speech Composition
• CA 350 – Introduction to Film
• CA 355 – Introduction to Media Production

Service:

• VLT Reader Board, 2022 – present
• GSO Representative, 2022-2023 academic year