Tara McPherson

Tara McPherson is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Studies in USC's School of Cinema-TV, where she teaches courses in television, new media, and contemporary popular culture. Before arriving at USC, Tara taught film and media studies at MIT. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Camera Obscura, The Velvet Light Trap, Discourse, and Screen, and in edited anthologies such as Race and Cyberspace, Virtual Publics, and Basketball Jones. Her Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Place and Femininity in the Deep South is forthcoming from Duke UP, as is the anthology Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (co-edited with Henry Jenkins and Jane Shattuc.) She is also currently co-editing several anthologies on new technology. Co-organizer of the 1999 conference, Interactive Frictions, Tara is currently among the organizers of Race in Digital Space, a two-year USC-MIT project, including conferences and art exhibits in both April 2001 and Fall 2002. The initiative is supported by the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Her new media research focuses on issues of convergence, race, and representation, and she is also exploring the film and multimedia work of Charles and Ray Eames.

This speaker will participate in the Graduate Programs panel.