Joanne Bernardi is an Associate Professor of Japanese (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1992). Bernardi's research and teaching interests draw on her background in photography, film and media, and East Asian studies: Japanese popular culture; Japanese and Asian cinema; animation; visual culture and its relation to media of the past; film history, culture, and historiography; film and media archiving and preservation, early and silent cinema; orphan and "lost" film; nuclear history and the visual image. Some of her recent courses include: Atomic Creatures: Godzilla; Tourist Japan; History of Japanese Cinema; Film as Object; Anime: Japanese Animation; as well as Mobsters, Monsters, and Swords.

Elizabeth Cohen is an Associate Professor of Art. Her research interests include: contemporary art and video production, critical theory, three-dimensional media, and new media production.

Jennifer Creech is an Assistant Professor of German. Her research and teaching interests include: late 20th-century German literature, film and culture; cinema studies; Marxist and feminist theories. Some recent courses Creech has taught are: Cinema & Revolution, Hollywood Behind the Wall, 20th-century Gender & Sexuality, Marx & Marxism. Professor Creech's current research explores the critical impulses in East German women's films, and the revolutionary and reactionary aspects of post-unification representations of the East.

Douglas Crimp is Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and teaches in the Ph.D. Program in Visual and Cultural Studies. He teaches courses on contemporary art, performance, film, photography, and architecture. In the spring of 2009, he will teach a course on dance film in Performance Studies at NYU. He has also been Visiting Professor at UCLA, the University of Manchester, Princeton, and Rutgers. Crimp is the recipient of two Art Critics' Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the College Art Association's Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism. His books include Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (MIT Press, 2002) and On the Museum's Ruins (MIT Press, 1993). He is currently completing a book on Andy Warhol's films and writing a memoir of New York in the 1970s.

Morris Eaves is a Professor of English. He teaches courses on British Romanticism, media studies, media history, editorial theory and practice. Morris Eaves's research has been principally concerned with literature and the visual arts and with the cultural contexts of British Romanticism, especially the interlocking histories of technology and commerce. His interests in multimedia editing, media history, and British Romanticism are combined in his work as a project director and editor of The William Blake Archive, the online digital edition of Blake's literary and artistic work, sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (University of Virginia) and the Library of Congress.

George Grella is an Associate Professor of English and Film Studies. He teaches courses on nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature, twentieth-century British literature, film, and the novel. Some courses he has taught in the past include: The Science Fiction Film, The Gangster Film, The Films of Woody Allen, Films of the Sixties.

In addition to more traditional areas of research, George Grella's interests and writings include popular culture and literature, and film. He has published widely on detective fiction and related crime novels, gangster novels, and espionage fiction; on film; and on baseball. A genre critic, he often approaches his subjects from the standpoint of myth, ritual, and archetype. He is currently writing a study of the American novelist Ross Macdonald and a book on baseball and American culture.

Sarah L. Higley is an Associate Professor of English. She teaches courses on medieval vernacular languages and literature of Northern Europe, film and media studies, fiction. Higley's primary interests lie in northern medieval literatures with an early emphasis on language, linguistics, and poetic structure. Her later work in fantasy and science fiction led her to explore medieval and modern notions of magic, machinery, monstrosity, and artifice. Her recent publications investigate the early origins of the werewolf, the medieval concept of the "robot," and manifestations throughout time of "simulacra." Lately, Higley has become interested in miniatures and artificial languages.

June Hwang is an Assistant Professor of German. Her research and teaching interests include: early twentieth-century literature, film and culture; German Jewish topics; urban spaces; questions of modernity; film theory; critical theory. Some recent courses Hwang has taught include: The Urban Imagination, Strangers in a Strange Land: German Jews, On the Move: Travelers, Wanderers, and Explorers. Her current work explores how discourses of wandering, urban alienation, and the stranger intersect in the figure of the German Jewish intellectual.

Jason Middleton is an Assistant Professor of English. He teaches courses in film studies; documentary film and video; theory and practice of experimental film and video; Hollywood genres, including comedy and horror. Some recent courses Middleton has taught include: Issues in Film: Documentary, Mock Documentary, Reality TV; Introductory Video and Sound Art. Middleton's research interests currently include the revision for publication of his manuscript, titled Documentary/Genre. The project brings together scholarship in the areas of documentary and genre studies, examining the under-theorized affective and bodily dimensions of documentary spectatorship. He is also an award-winning experimental filmmaker, whose work has screened at a variety of festivals and other venues in the U.S. and internationally, as well as on public and satellite television.

Greta Aiyu Niu is Assistant Professor of English. She teaches course on cinema and media studies, 20th-century American literature, gender studies, Asian American studies. Some recent courses Niu has taught include: Chinese Cinemas; Asian American Literature and Film, and Sound Cinema 1959-Present. Niu's research investigates networks of film, media, and technology, with an interest in material cultural productions. Her book manuscript Chinese Diasporic Cinemas: Migration, Culture and Globalization analyzes constructions of Chinese diasporas and, by extension, questions the phenomenon called globalization. The book analyzes migrations within films and the migrations produced by and travels required of the cultures surrounding those film texts. Her next manuscript project, Techno-Orientalism, Cyberculture and Science Parks, is a comparative study that includes research and interviews in Taiwan and research at various U.S. Archives. She has an ongoing interest in Asian American literature and film, and in gender theory.

Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández is an Associate Professor of Spanish. He has published extensively on Hispanic literatures and cultures, including postmodern fiction, cinema, alterity and art, and European philosophical traditions in Latin American texts. The aesthetic representation of the "past"—how writers and artists incorporate the cultural remains of the past millennium—are central to his research. His book Mexico's Ruins: Juan García Ponce and the Writing of Mexican Modernity was published in 2007. He is currently writing a book on Latin American architecture.

Claudia Schaefer is a Professor of Spanish. Her research and teaching interests encompass all aspects of cultural production in Latin America and Spain of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. She has published four books and numerous articles in these areas and her latest book is Bored to Distraction: Cinema of Excess in End-of-the-Century Mexico and Spain (SUNY Press 2003). She is completing a biography of Frida Kahlo for Greenwood Press to be published in 2008, and a volume on anarchism and utopian thought.

Reinhild Steingröver is an Associate Professor of German.Her main teaching and research interests focus on contemporary German and Austrian film and literature, in particular the intersection of art and politics and the role of the artist in society.

Steingröver is the editor of the anthology Not So Plain As Black and White: Afro-German History and Culture 1890-2000 (with Professor Patricia Mazón, State University of New York at Buffalo), which was published by the University of Rochester Press in 2005. She is currently writing a book on the last generation of film directors of the East German state-run film studio DEFA, entitled Last Features: DEFA's Lost Generation, 1990-92 and editing the volume After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film (with Professor Randall Halle, University of Rochester).

Allen C. Topolski is an Associate Professor of Art. His research and studio practices focus on production that incorporates found materials and a variety of processes to explore nostalgia and memory in technologies of domesticity and convenience.

Some recent courses Topolski has taught include: Markings, Methods and Materials; Visual Production; and 3D: (Re)Collecting the Object.

Sharon Willis is a Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies. Her research interests include: feminist theory, film theory and visual analysis, cultural studies, and modern French literature and literary theory. Her publications include: Marguerite Duras: Writing on the Body (1986), Male Trouble, co-editor, with Constance Penley (1993), High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Cinema. Her current book project is Islands in the Sun: The Civil Rights Movement and Its Legacies in Film 1949-2003. Some recent courses Willis has taught are The Films of Jean-Luc Godard and Film History: 1929-1959.

Charles Allen, Chief Projectionist
Hailing from Rochester, Charlie was hired as Chief Projectionist at the George Eastman House in 2007. He received a BA in Film Production from Hunter College in 2003 and graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation's certificate program in 2006.

Antonella Bonfanti, Curatorial Assistant, Technical Services
Antonella began working in the Motion Picture Department in the Fall of 2008. Specializing in Cinema Studies and Visual Arts, she completed an Honors B.A. from the University of Toronto in 2003 and spent the following three years working as a free-lance motion picture projectionist and technical director for independent cinemas and film festivals in Toronto. She graduated of the Selznick Graduate Program of Film and Media Preservation in 2008.

Jared Case, Head of Cataloguing and Research Center
Jared is a native of Western New York, and has studied at SUNY Cortland, SUNY Brockport and The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation (class of 2002). He was hired as a Curatorial Assistant in 2002 and moved into cataloging in 2003. Jared's main duties involve the maintenance and administration of the cataloging database, TMS (The Museum System).

Patti Doyen, Vault Manager, Safety Film
A 2006 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, she studied film production and media studies at New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is a member of AIC-CERT (the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Collections Emergency Response Team), specializing in disaster preparedness and recovery.

Dianna Ford, Curatorial Assistant, Technical Services
Dianna received a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science from Kent State University and worked for nine years as an archivist and cataloger at the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron in Ohio. She is a 2008 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation.

David Frassetto, Curatorial Assistant—Digital Stills
David received his B.A. in Communication/Broadcasting from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 1998. After graduation, David was employed by broadcast news for six years as a video editor, as well as a videographer, master control and studio camera operator. He also worked with Crown Media for three years in video quality assurance. A 2009 MFA graduate from Visual Studies Workshop, SUNY Brockport and his 2008 summer internship at George Eastman House led to his current staff position.

Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
Jim Healy began as the Motion Picture Department's Film Programmer in September of 2001 and became Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, in early 2003. Prior to working at George Eastman House, he was a Film Programmer for the Chicago International Film Festival and a freelance writer, living in Chicago. In the last year, he's programmed and arranged the first full retrospectives of John Cassavetes' work in Italy and Russia. Jim is also an advisor to the Torino Film Festival, for whom he co-authored a book on Cassavetes' work, published in 2007.

Nancy Kauffman, Stills Archivist
Nancy received her B.A in English from Arizona State University in 1987 and her Master's in Library Science from Emporia State University in 2004. She graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2005. She worked as a paralegal in litigation and environmental law for 16 years in Portland, Oregon. Nancy joined the Motion Picture Department shortly after graduating from the Selznick School as a Curatorial Assistant. In 2007 she was promoted to Stills Archivist.

Anthony L'Abbate, Preservation Officer
Anthony is a 1999 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, after graduation he worked for two years at the Cinema Arts Laboratory, in Angels, Pennsylvania, as their contact printer. He returned to George Eastman House in the fall of 2001 as the stills archivist. Since March of 2007 he has worked in preservation.

Alexis Mayer, Curatorial Assistant, Digital Stills
Alexis graduated from Emerson College in 2006 with a BFA in Visual and Media Arts. She has worked as a projectionist for two years and currently works part time at Rochester's Little and Cinema theaters. Alexis graduated from the L. Jeffery Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2008.

Deborah Stoiber, Nitrate Vault Manager, The Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center
Deborah is from Fresno, CA where she received her BA in Economics from California State University, Fresno. She graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School in 1998. After graduation, she spent time at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY working on their 16mm collection. She was the Assistant Vault Manager, William K. Everson Collection at GEH from 1998-2000 and has been the Vault Manager of the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center since 2000.

Jeffrey (Jeff) Stoiber, Assistant Curator, The L. Jeffrey School of Film Preservation
Jeff has both his BA in Media Studies (1993) and his Masters of Library Science (1997) from the State University of New York at Buffalo, his hometown. While completing his MLS he interned at both the American Film Institute and the George Eastman House. The Eastman House internship led to his employment as the Administrator of the Selznick School a position he's held since 1997.

Edward (Ed) E. Stratmann, Associate Curator, Preservation
Hired by James Card in 1974, Ed has worked for all five Curators/Department heads of the Motion Picture Department. He started as a Curatorial Assistant, working with nitrate. Over the years he has been Film Technician, Vault Manager, Projectionist, in charge of the Study Center, and Assistant Curator. He took over Preservation in 1988. Ed received The AMIA Dan and Kathy Leab Award and The Pordenone Preservation Award, both in 1998. He is a founding member of AMIA and has served on the AMIA Board of Directors, as Secretary. Ed has been a member of SMPTE for over ten years and has been on the local board of Managers three times.

Ben Tucker, Collection Processing Technician
Ben Tucker was born and raised in Nitro, WV and received a Film Studies degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Following graduation he worked in various positions at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and then in the Film & Video Department at the Andy Warhol Museum. In 2002 he moved to Rochester to attend The L. Jeffery Selznick School of Film Preservation and has been an employee of the Motion Picture Department since graduation.

Daniel (Dan) Wagner, Preservation Officer
Dan is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2000. After graduation he spent 5 years as the Safety Vault Manager at the Eastman House and is currently the Preservation Officer in Charge of Digital Initiatives.

Tim Wagner, Film Technician & Coordinator of Shipping
Tim is from Buffalo, New York where he received his BA in Media Production & Distribution from SUNY Buffalo. He graduated in 2001 from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. Tim has experience working in film and video production & post-production, theatrical projection, broadcast television, distance learning, corporate communications, archival projection and film handling. He participated in archival staff exchanges with the National Library of Norway and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. His passions include amusement parks, roller coasters, movie theaters, and band organs.

Caroline Yeager, Assistant Curator, Motion Picture Department
Caroline has been a staff member since 1998 when she graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. She has 25 years of experience working in performing arts, an MFA from Temple University (1975), and a BS from SUNY Brockport (1972). As Assistant Curator, MPD, she has the following responsibilities: Providing access to the film collection through film loans; Assisting donors with acquisitions and access to film materials, negotiating, drafting and editing donor and deposit agreements; Grant Writing and supervision; Management and supervision of department budgets; providing the public with information on the motion picture collections and access.