Maria San Filippo

In my first book, The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television (forthcoming in 2013 from Indiana University Press), I analyze and theorize bisexuality’s role in screen representation, marketing, and spectatorship, arguing for its critical importance to screen media and queer theory. As a 2012-2013 Research Associate in Feminist New Media at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, I am beginning a new book project on the convergence of old and new media, and its implications for screening and contemplating film and alternative sexualities. Other current research interests include mumblecore and other “neo-neo-realist” film and videomaking, the commodification of girl stardom, experimental television and web series, and pornography. I hold a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA, and have published articles and reviews in CineAction, Cineaste, English Language Notes, Film History, In Media Res, the Journal of Bisexuality, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Senses of Cinema, and the anthologies Global Art Cinema (Oxford, 2010) and Millennial Masculinity: Men in Contemporary American Cinema (Wayne State, 2012).

As the 2008-2010 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies at Wellesley, I designed and taught the college's first television studies class in addition to a WRIT 125 course on women and television. Also at Wellesley, I have taught courses on international film history, documentary, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, romantic comedy, gender and sexuality in cinema, Hitchcock, women and film, and queer American literature. I also teach courses on theories of representation, gender and sexuality in classical Hollywood cinema, and French cinema at Harvard and MIT.

I was a co-organizer of the New Directions in Documentary Film Festival & Symposium, which took place October 19-25, 2009 at Wellesley, as well as the organizer of campus visits by filmmakers Christine Vachon and Claudia Weill. I am an active member of the Queer Caucus and Women's Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), the Boston Media Collective, and the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies. Recently I delivered talks at conferences sponsored by SCMS, Console-ing Passions, the University of Oregon, Yale University, Wellesley's Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and NerdNite Boston, and I have upcoming talks scheduled at MassMoCA and the Five College's Women's Studies Research Center. I also served as a Juror at the 2008 Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Los Angeles.

I enjoy watching films and television, tweeting about media and culture, reading contemporary novels and poetry, shopping for vintage clothing and used books, music collecting, yoga, hiking, exotic dining, and traveling.