Garrett Hartman Strpko is a PhD candidate in Communication Arts (Film) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, having received his MA in Film and Media Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. His primary areas of interest lie in film and media philosophy and theory, especially phenomenology. His dissertation focuses on historical documentary produced for the Public Broadcasting Service by filmmakers Henry Hampton and Ken Burns. He has authored or co-authored articles on spectatorship and ethics, the phenomenology of mood in film viewing, and war hero-turned-movie star Audie Murphy.
Publications
“The Either/Or of the Cinematic Image.” In Deleuze and Kierkegaard, special issue, Deleuze and Guattari Studies. (forthcoming 2025)
“Reconsidering Mood and Narrative Cinema.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 82, no. 4 (Fall 2024): 387-395. DOI: 10.1093/jaac/kpae032.
“Most Decorated Soldier: Negotiating Combat Trauma in the Stardom of Audie Murphy.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 41, no. 4 (2024): 560-581. DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2022.2152269.
With Carl Plantinga. “Moral Reflection: On the Reflective Afterlife of Screen Stories.” In What Film is Good For: The Ethics of Spectatorship, edited by Julian Hanich and Martin P. Rossouw. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2023.
Conference Presentations
“Sensational Violence in Samuel Fuller’s Tabloid Aesthetic.” Presented at The Hollywood Conference, University of Southern California, July 18, 2025.
“Incongruity, Différance, and Utopia in Kenneth Anger’s Use of Popular Music.” Presented at Music and the Moving Image Conference, New York University, May 30, 2025.
““Film Blackness and Cinematic History in Da 5 Bloods (2020).” Presented at the Second Midwest Graduate Film and Media Studies Symposium, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, April 18, 2025.
“‘A New Kind of Learning Experience’: Cinema Verité as Catholic Adult Education, 1967-1968.” Presented at the First Midwest Graduate Film Studies Symposium, University of Iowa, March 29, 2024.
“Between Two Superimposed Worlds: André Bazin, Spatial (Dis)unity, and the Superimposed ‘Screens’ of Twin Peaks: The Return.” Presented at “It is in Our House Now,” the First International Twin Peaks Online Conference, June 19, 2021.
Honors/Awards
2025b Charles Pearce Scholarship
2025a SCMS Student Writing Award – Third Place
“Frames of War in Inglourious Basterds (2009)”
2024a Helen K. Herman Scholarship
2024b UW Housing Honored Instructor
Courses Taught
Teaching Assistant, CA355: Introduction to Digital Media Production
Teaching Assistant, CA350: Introduction to Film Studies
Teaching Assistant, CA100: Introduction to Speech Composition