I’m a scholar of French and Francophone cinema and television with particular interests in 1950s and 1960s cultural history and the connections between anthropology and cinema. I’m Associate Professor of French at Bentley University and a 2025-2026 Visiting Scholar at Harvard University (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures). I hold a Ph.D. in French from Columbia University (2016) and a B.A. in French and in Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2008). My training in literary studies informs my study of cinema. Close reading, archival research, and attention to cultural and historical contexts are key aspects of my approach.
My book, The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema, was published by Indiana University Press in June 2024. It explores the significant ties between colonial ethnography and innovative works of 1960s French cinema and probes the emergence of a self-aware urban French ethnography in both fictional and documentary films during the era of decolonization. The Ethnographic Optic offers fresh readings of canonical films including Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch, 1958), La jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), and Muriel ou le Temps d’un retour (Alain Resnais, 1963). The project was supported by the Phi Beta Kappa Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship and Fulbright Fellowship to France.
I’ve published scholarly articles in Studies in French Cinema and in the edited collection Dans le sillage de Jean Rouch (Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme). My public-facing work includes collaborations with Mubi Notebook and Icarus Films. Other writing and translations have appeared in Public Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, KinoKultura, and the Romanic Review.
My current research extends the work of The Ethnographic Optic in new directions. An article on the confluences of 1950s French and African cinema is forthcoming in the Winter 2026 issue of Screen. In addition, I’m preparing a new project on the mid-twentieth-century intersections of the domestic French ethnographic tradition, French cinema, and television, with a particular focus on the work of Agnès Varda. This project was advanced by a Fall 2023 research residency at the Institute for Advanced Study Aix-Marseille (Iméra) and at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem). As part of the residency, I delivered a masterclass on Moi, un Noir and co-curated and presented films for the Festival Jean Rouch “Hors les murs” at the Mucem.
I serve as co-Chair of the Documentary Studies Scholarly Interest Group (Society of Cinema and Media Studies) and on the Advisory Board of the Boston Cinema/Media Seminar.