Maria San Filippo is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies in 2008-2010. She graduated from Wellesley with a B.A. in Political Science and Film Studies, and holds a M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. San Filippo’s research focuses on intersections between screen media and contemporary cultural politics, especially in regards to how gender and sexuality are negotiated through film and television. During her time at Wellesley, she is completing a book titled Don’t Fence Me In: Binary Trouble In and Out of Hollywood, an examination of how bisexuality is represented and functions in screen media since the 1960s. She is also at work on a project that reconsiders 1970s filmmaking, historiography, and cultural memory. Her articles and critical reviews appear or are forthcoming in Cineaste, English Language Notes, Film History, Journal of Bisexuality, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, Scope, Senses of Cinema, and in the anthologies American Movie Masculinity, Global Art Cinema, and Race and Independent Media.

Previously Dr. San Filippo has taught courses on romantic comedy, queer women and Hollywood, queer independent/experimental filmmaking and archiving, feminist film theory, Hitchcock, American film history, and international film auteurs at UCLA, Wellesley, and Santa Barbara City College.

During her time as a Mellon Fellow, Dr. San Filippo will teach “American Television, Culture, & Society” (CAMS 261/227) in Spring 2009 and 2010, CAMS 211: “Hollywood in the 1970s” during Summer School 2009, and CAMS 222: “Non-Fiction Film: Ethics, Aesthetics, Action” in Fall 2009. In collaboration with the latter, she is helping to organize the New Directions in Documentary Film Festival & Symposium, taking place October 19-25, 2009 at Wellesley.

Profile last updated: 8/09