Curriculum Vitae



Melanie E. S. Kohnen


Education


Brown University, Providence, RI


Ph.D., Department of American Civilization, 2010
M.A., Department of American Civilization, 2002

Dissertation: Screening the Closet: The Discourse of Visibility, Sexuality, and Queer Representation in American Film and Television, 1969-present


Advisor: Lynne Joyrich, Department of Modern Culture and Media

Readers:
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Department of Modern Culture and Media
Robert Lee, Department of American Civilization

Preliminary Exam Fields:
  • Representations of Technology/Technologies of Representation: Film, TV, and New Media
  • Queer Theories, Subjectivities and Representations
  • Poststructuralism(s): Debates and Challenges
  • Negotiating Cultural Identities: Transnationalism, (Im)migration, Diaspora and Asian America


Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet, Duesseldorf, Germany

M.A., English Languages and Literatures with minor in Media Studies, 2001
Thesis: Crossing Borders, Relocating Our Selves: Chinese American Women's Identities After 1965


Wesleyan University, 1998-1999

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) exchange student in American Studies

Current Academic Appointment


Marrion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-present

Past Academic Appointments


Instructor, Summer Studies, Brown University, 2007-2009

Teaching Fellow, Department of American Civilization, Brown University, Spring 2005

Teaching Assistant, Department of American Civilization and Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University, Fall 2002; 2004-2006

Professional Experience


Coordinator, American Film Institute Academic Network at Georgia Tech

Co-coordinator, Writing and Communication Program's Contribution to Celebrate Teaching Day, Georgia Institute of Technology, April 2010

Managing Editor, Digital Humanities Quarterly, July 2006-2009

Teaching Consultant, Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2004-2009

Publications

Queer Visibility, Sexuality and Race in American Film and Television: Screening the Closet

Manuscript, forthcoming from Routledge 2012

Review of S. Craig Watkins' The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future. 

Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, November 2011

"Decoding the Industrial and Digital City: Visions of Security in Holmes' and Sherlock's London."

Co-authored essay with Anne Kustritz for Transmedia Sherlock, ed. Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse, forthcoming 2012

"The Adventures of a Repressed Farmboy and the Billionaire Who Loves Him: Queer Spectatorship in Smallville Fandom."

Teen Television: Essays on Programming and Fandom. Eds. Sharon Ross and Louisa Stein. 2008.

"AIDS, History, and Generation in Brothers & Sisters."

FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. 2010.
http://flowtv.org/2010/09/aids-history-and-generation-in-brothers-sisters/

"Tying Narrative Threads by Opening Closet Doors: Coming out on Ugly Betty."

FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. 2010.
http://flowtv.org/2010/07/tying-narrative-threads-by-opening-closet-doors/

"'Fight for the Futures We Want': FlashForward, Temporality and Queer Possibilities."

FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. 2010.
http://flowtv.org/2010/06/fight-for-the-futures-we-want/

"Signal to Noise: The Paradoxes of History and Technology in Battlestar Galactica."

FlowTV: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. 2008.  http://flowtv.org/?p=1056

Presentations

Everything New is Old Again: The Normalization of Web-Based Television.

What is Television? Conference, University of Oregon, March 2012. Conference paper available on Hacktivision.

Transformative Mediations? Queer and Ethnic Studies and the Politics of the Digital.

Roundtable, American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, October 2011.
Overview and abstracts available on Google Docs

Consuming Queer Stories: Transmedia Authorship and Branding in the It Gets Better Project.

Media in Transition 7, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 2011
Presentation available online: http://lcc.gatech.edu/~mkohnen3/MiT7.html

The B(l)inding Effects of Quality TV: Racial and Sexual Diversity in Brothers & Sisters and The Wire.

Flow conference, University of Texas, Austin, September 2010
Presentation available online: http://lcc.gatech.edu/~mkohnen3/Flow2010.html

Kevin and Scotty Get Married (And Hardly Anyone is Watching): Queer Visibility and the Boundaries of Everyday Life on Television.

Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media and Feminism. University of Oregon, Eugene, April 2010.

Presentation available online: http://prezi.com/-r_txqbxegn9/console-ing-passions-2010/

Media Literacy and Transformative Works: Notes from the Multimodal Classroom.

Outside of Space and Time: Screening Queerness in Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don't Cry.

Media in Transition 6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 2009.

Presentation Podcast available online: Media Temporalities

Whitness as Screen: Race, Sexuality, and the 'Explosion of Gay Visibility.'

Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media and Feminism. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008.

'Disco, Drugs and Dick'? Safe Sex, 'Promiscuity' and the AIDS Crisis.

Out of Time/Out of Place: Queer Studies in Theory and Practice. Graduate Student Colloquium, Brown University, April 2008.

'We Are at War': Battlestar Galactica and the Reimagination of Contemporary American History.

Media in Transition 5: Creativity, Collaboration and Ownership in the Digital Age. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 2007

Battlestar Galactica and America after 9/11: Some Notes on Collaborators, Terrorists and War.

(Re)Producing Cult TV: Battlestar Galactica. Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University, March 2007.

Queer Code: Re-envisioning the Erotics of Online Social Networks.

Console-ing Passions. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, May 2006.

Internet Research Methodologies Workshop.

Co-cordinator and Presenter. Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, London, March 2005.

Ho(moreroticism)Yay!: Queer Specatorship in Smallville Fandom.

Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA, 2004.

Teaching


Georgia Institute of Technology

Transmedia Television, Fall 2011

Web 2.0: Collaboration / Consumption / Creativity, Summer 2011

Digital Media and Participatory Culture, Fall 2010

Understanding Television, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012

Technology / Media / Everyday Life, Fall 2009

Independent Studies:
  • Writing for the American Film Institute Catalog, Spring  & Fall 2011; Spring 2012
  • Beyond the Screen: The Television Industry in the Age of Transmedia, Summer 2010


Brown University

The "Gay 90s"?: Sexuality, Identity, and the Media in the 1990s
Department of American Civilization, Spring 2005

From I Love Lucy to Lost: Television and American Culture
Summer Studies, Summer 2007, 2008, 2009

Teaching Assistant, Department of American Civilization

  • Technology and Material Culture in America: The Urban Built Environment, Spring 2006
  • Advertising: History and Consequences, Fall 2005
  • Introduction to Ethnic Studies, Fall 2007

Teaching Assistant, Department of Modern Culture and Media

  • Introduction to Digital Media, Fall 2004
  • Cinema and Stardom: Image/Industry/Fantasy, Spring 2004 
  • Introduction to Modern Culture and Media, Fall 2002

Professional Development


Seminar in Hybrid (online and face-to-face) Learning Environments
Georgia Institute of Technology, Spring 2012

THATCamp Southeast (Technology and Humanities Camp)
Emory University, March 2011

Seminar in Digital Pedagogy
Georgia Institute of Technology, Fall 2009

Summer Institute for Teaching and Technology
Brown University, June 2009

Teaching Certificates:

Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Brown University

  • Classroom Tools, May 2009
  • Professional Development, May 2008
  • Higher Education, May 2003

ifu (International Women's University)
Hannover, Germany, July-October 2000
Interdisciplinary graduate program attended by women from 115 countries, organized into six project areas. Participated in "Migration," focusing on transnational communities and globalization. As final project, created multimedia performance about 12 ifu participants, combining photography, digital images, oral history, music and spoken word.

Awards, Grants, and Scholarships


  • National Council of Teachers of English Media Literacy Award 2011
(co-author of award application on behalf of Georgia Tech's Writing and Communication Program)
  • Historical Society of Southern California Haynes Research Grant, Summer 2008
  • Miss Abbott's School Alumnae Fellowship, 2006-2007
  • Brown University Fellowship, 2001-2002
  • John F. Kennedy Institute Library Research Grant, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, March 2001
  • DAAD Research Grant, Summer 2000
  • DAAD Scholarship, August 1998-June 1999
   

Service

Writing and Communication Program, Georgia Institute of Technology

  • Research & Development Committee, Fall 2011-present
  • Critical Pedagogy Committee, Fall 2010-present

Professional Associations


American Studies Association
German Association of American Studies
HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory)
 Society for Cinema and Media Studies

References

Lynne Joyrich
Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Department of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Christine Becker
Department of Film, Television and Theatre
University of Notre Dame