L. Jeffrey Selznick School Masters Faculty

University of Rochester Faculty

Joel Burges, Associate Professor of English and Director, Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies 
Burges is currently working on two book projects, a manuscript titled Turning Back the Clock: Technological Obsolescence and Historical Time in Contemporary Culture and, as co-editor with Amy J. Elias, a collection entitled Contemporalities: Keywords for the Present. Working at the intersection of post-1945 cultural studies, critical theory, and media studies in these projects, Burges is rethinking ideas about time and history that have unduly dominated thought for the past thirty years; he is interested in how that which we have rejected as obsolete, outdated, and old-fashioned figures centrally in the works of post-1980 novelists and filmmakers as a repository for alternative modernities and alternative temporalities, such that the past supersedes the future as the temporal horizon of art and politics alike in their work. Burges is also working on a book titled Literature after TV, which explores the intersection of the literary and the televisual both before and after 1945.

Sarah L. Higley, Professor of English
She teaches courses on medieval vernacular languages and literature of Northern Europe, film and media studies, fiction. Higley's primary interests lie in northern medieval literatures with an early emphasis on language, linguistics, and poetic structure. Her later work in fantasy and science fiction led her to explore medieval and modern notions of magic, machinery, monstrosity, and artifice. Her recent publications investigate the early origins of the werewolf, the medieval concept of the "robot," and manifestations throughout time of "simulacra." Lately, Higley has become interested in miniatures and artificial languages.

June Hwang, Associate Professor of German
Her research and teaching interests include: early twentieth-century literature, film and culture; German Jewish topics; urban spaces; questions of modernity; film theory; critical theory. Some recent courses Hwang has taught include: The Urban Imagination, Strangers in a Strange Land: German Jews, On the Move: Travelers, Wanderers, and Explorers. Her current work explores how discourses of wandering, urban alienation, and the stranger intersect in the figure of the German Jewish intellectual.

Jason Middleton, Associate Professor of English, and Visual and Cultural Studies
He teaches courses in film studies; documentary film and video; theory and practice of experimental film and video; Hollywood genres, including comedy and horror. Some recent courses Middleton has taught include: Issues in Film: Documentary, Mock Documentary, Reality TV; Introductory Video and Sound Art. Middleton's research interests currently include the revision for publication of his manuscript, titled Documentary/Genre. The project brings together scholarship in the areas of documentary and genre studies, examining the under-theorized affective and bodily dimensions of documentary spectatorship. He is also an award-winning experimental filmmaker, whose work has screened at a variety of festivals and other venues in the U.S. and internationally, as well as on public and satellite television.

Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández, Associate Professor of Spanish
He has published extensively on Hispanic literatures and cultures, including postmodern fiction, cinema, alterity and art, and European philosophical traditions in Latin American texts. The aesthetic representation of the "past"—how writers and artists incorporate the cultural remains of the past millennium—are central to his research. His book Mexico's Ruins: Juan García Ponce and the Writing of Mexican Modernity was published in 2007. He is currently writing a book on Latin American architecture.

Claudia Schaefer, Professor of Spanish
Her research and teaching interests encompass all aspects of cultural production in Latin America and Spain of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She has published five books and numerous articles in these areas. Her latest book is a biography of Frida Kahlo (Greenwood Press, 2008). She is currently writing on the Mexican film director Arturo Ripstein, and is completing a volume on anarchism and utopian thought.

Reinhild Steingröver, Chair of the Humanities department and Professor of German and Film at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
Steingröver is the author of Last Features: East German Cinema’s Lost Generation (2014), which appeared in German translation as Spätvorstellung: Die chancenlose Generation der DEFA in December 2014. She also authored a monograph on Thomas Bernhard (2000) and co-edited with Randall Halle the volume After the Avant-garde: Engagements with Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film (2008), as well as the anthology Not So Plain as Black and White: Afro-German Culture and History, 1890–2000 (with Patricia Mazon, 2005), as well as numerous articles. Steingröver has curated silent film/live music programs for the George Eastman Museum, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Cinematheque Berlin. In 2009, she co-curated with the DEFA Film Library at UMASS Amherst the film festival Wendeflicks: Last Films from East Germany in Los Angeles.

Allen C. Topolski, Associate Professor of Art
His research and studio practices focus on production that incorporates found materials and a variety of processes to explore nostalgia and memory in technologies of domesticity and convenience. Some recent courses Topolski has taught include: Markings, Methods and Materials; Visual Production; and 3D: (Re)Collecting the Object.

Pirooz Kalayeh, Associate Professor of Instruction of Scriptwriting and Film and Media Production
Pirooz Kalayeh is an Iranian American filmmaker, writer, and professor whose formally adventurous, hybrid cinema interrogates institutional power, displacement, and the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling. A solo practitioner who often serves as his own cinematographer, editor, and sound designer, Kalayeh blends cinematic disciplines to create deeply intimate, politically urgent visual essays. Currently serving as a faculty member in film and media production at the University of Rochester, Kalayeh consistently bridges the gap between academic theory and vanguard independent cinema.

Matthew Omelsky, Associate Professor of English, Associate Professor of Black Studies, Associate Professor of Visual and Cultural Studies
Omelsky's research is concentrated in the field of global black cultural studies, with an emphasis on how 20th and 21st century Black artists from across the world express a desire for unfathomable freedoms. He is currently working on Kaleidoscopic Blackness: Collage, Speculation, and Contemporary Global Black Aesthetics. The project is a study of the emerging field of 21st century black artists from around the world—Ghana, Britain, Germany, Kenya, Trinidad, Canada, the US, among others—imagining the world otherwise through assemblages of disparate fragments of ideas, images, forms, and media. Working across electronic music, film, television, fiction, poetry, and sculpture, the project examines how artists such as Zohra Opoku, Chino Amobi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and The Otolith Group merge collage form and the speculative in singular ways to simultaneously expose the layered crises of our time, and signal the possibility, however uncertain, of transfiguration.

Danielle Genevro, Visiting Assistant Professor in English and Film and Media Studies
Genevro studies pre-1960s US cinema and film style, with a particular emphasis on history, technology, and aesthetics. Her research interests include international early cinema, the Hollywood studio era, film culture and materiality, film archives, and practitioner discourse. Recent classes she has taught include "Landscape Across Media"; "Hitchcock & Almódovar"; "The History of Special Effects: From Analog to Digital"; and "Film History: Early Cinema". She has published an interview with Tom Gunning and has a forthcoming article on rear projection.

Rita Safariants, Associate Professor of Russian, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Rita Safariants's scholarly and pedagogical interests include late-Soviet, post-Soviet and contemporary Russian film, Russian literature, media, popular music, and performance culture. Her book, Soviet Rock on Screen: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of a Film Genre (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) is the first study to examine the role of rock music in the last decade of Soviet cinematic production and its reverberations in the Putin era. Her recent courses include "Soviet Cinema,” “Russian Cinema after the Fall,” and “Russian Movies that Rock."
 

George Eastman Museum Staff

Justin Aungst, Document Scanning Technician - Leo Hurwitz Collection
Justin was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona before moving to Rochester in 2021 to attend Rochester Institute of Technology. There he received his MFA in Photography and Related Media while working in both the RIT Archives and the Cary Graphic Arts Collection. Justin joined the Moving Image Department in the summer of 2025 where he digitizes the Leo Hurwitz papers collection.

Peter Bagrov, Senior Curator
Peter Bagrov joined the Moving Image Department in 2019. He started his career in Russia as a film historian. In 2011 he received his PhD from the Institute for Cinema Studies in Moscow. Since 2005 he has been teaching film courses at various universities, curating retrospectives, giving talks and publishing articles on a variety of film-related subjects. In 2013-2017 he was the Senior Curator at Gosfilmofond of Russia, the Russian state film archive. In 2013-2019 he served as the artistic director of the archival film festival “Belye Stolby.” He has been serving on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in 2017-2018 and since 2021, in 2023 he was elected president of FIAF.

Graham Brown, Preservation Officer
Graham joined the George Eastman Museum in 2021 after graduating from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation earlier that year. On the digital preservation team, his duties primarily encompass the digitization, restoration, and grading of moving image collection materials. Prior to moving to Rochester, he worked at Negativeland Motion Picture Laboratory in Ridgewood, NY, processing and scanning 8mm, Super8, and 16mm film. He holds a BA in Film Studies from Wesleyan University.

Jared Case, Curator of Film Exhibitions
A 2002 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, Jared curates the nightly program of film exhibitions in the Dryden Theatre, oversees daily operations of the theatre, and acts as a department liaison for moving image-related exhibitions and film programming related to current exhibitions. He has appeared on Turner Classic Movies and The History Channel and has spoken at festivals and conferences around the country.

Chris Crouse, Laboratory Manager
Chris is a 2019 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, and he joined the museum as a Preservation Officer in 2021. He previously worked as a projectionist at a number of archives and museums including The Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives. In 2016 he helped found The Metrograph, a new cinema in Manhattan, as their Technical Director. Chris is originally from the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York.

Nancy Kauffman, Archivist, Stills, Posters, and Paper Collection
Nancy holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Arizona State University and a Master's in Library Science from Emporia State University. She worked as a paralegal for sixteen years in Portland, Oregon, before attending The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2004-2005. Nancy was hired as a curatorial assistant in the Moving Image Department in 2006. In 2007, she was promoted to archivist of the Stills, Posters and Paper Collections, where she manages, catalogs, and provides access to a collection of more than one million objects and over 600 linear feet of manuscripts and research materials. As faculty of the Selznick School, she teaches collection management and cataloging.

Anthony L'Abbate, Preservation Manager   
A 1999 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, he began his career as a laboratory technician at Cinema Arts, Inc. in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, from 1999 to 2001. He returned to the Eastman Museum in 2001 as Stills Archivist, a position he held for five years, during which he supervised the scanning of hundreds of still images and frame enlargements from the museum’s preserved film collections. In 2007, he moved into the Moving Image Department as Preservation Officer, and was promoted to Preservation Manager in 2017. Over the course of his career, L’Abbate has overseen the preservation and restoration of numerous films, including Lying Wives (1925), One Clear Call (1922), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), and Huckleberry Finn (1920). His recent projects include the restoration of The Clutch of Circumstance (1918) and the reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown (1927).

Sophia Lorent, Assistant Archivist, Stills, Posters and Paper Collections 
Sophia Lorent is a native of Wisconsin, where they received their BA in History at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse in 2012. As an undergraduate, they worked for the UW-L Oral History Department digitizing oral histories as well as completed an internship at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. After moving to Rochester, Sophia graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2014, and completed their MA at the University of Rochester in 2015. They joined the staff of the Moving Image Department in 2015 as Curatorial Assistant and managed research and access requests as well as assisted with cataloging the department’s collections. In January 2022, Sophia became the Assistant Archivist, Stills, Posters and Paper Collections (SPP), where they now assist with managing and cataloging the many objects in the SPP collections and continue to provide research and access assistance.

Kirk McDowell, Associate Collection Manager
Born and raised in Mound, Minnesota, Kirk is a 2018 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. After spending two years working in the nitrate vaults and copyright processing unit of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA, he returned to Rochester in 2021 to join the George Eastman Museum’s collection management team. He holds a BA in Film from the University of Wisconsin and an MA from the University of Rochester.

Gordon Nelson, Assistant Curator, Digital Collection
Gordon holds a BFA in Cinema from Edinboro University and he is a 2015 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. His professional background includes working as a filmmaker, educator and curator. His films have been screened at many venues, including MoMA and Anthology Film Archives. He has taught film and video courses at MassArt, Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the University of Rochester. He programmed 35mm film screenings for the Carnegie Museum of Art and he helped establish and operate Jefferson Presents, a Pittsburgh-based experimental microcinema collective active from 2000-09.

Beth Rennie, Head of Information, Research and Access
Beth joins the museum from Ontario Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honors degree in Classics and Music from Queen’s University and a Masters of Information (Library Science/Archiving) with a special focus on special collections from the University of Toronto. An internship with the film archivist at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) led her to join The L. Jeffrey Selznick School class of 2008-2009. After graduation she worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and then spent 7 years working in client care and information management with the Canadian Armed Forces. Beth joined the Moving Image Department in 2022 where she works with researcher inquiries, loan and footage requests, and database management and cataloging.

Sheryl Smith, Chief Projectionist
Sheryl Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a 2018 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. Immediately following graduation Sheryl began working as projectionist at the Dryden Theatre. She has also worked as a projectionist at The Little Theatre and KODAK Center. In 2019 Sheryl was promoted to Dryden Theatre Manager and in 2022 promoted to Dryden Theatre Chief Projectionist. Her prior career includes several years as a radio DJ, television engineer, and 23 years as an advertising producer/director for Time Warner Media.

Kirk Stevens, Assistant Collections Manager
Kirk Stevens was born and raised in Rochester, NY. After receiving his BA in Media Studies from University at Buffalo in 2011, he worked with various cinemas, film festivals, and distributors in New York City and Philadelphia. He graduated from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2024, and worked as a Project Archivist at Visual Studies Workshop before beginning with the Moving Image Department at GEM in 2025. Outside of the museum, Kirk also plays music and teaches improv in the Rochester area.

Deborah Stoiber, Collection Manager
Deborah Stoiber received her BA in economics from California State University, Fresno. After graduating from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School in 1998, she worked at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, assessing their 16mm collection. Returning to Rochester, she was the assistant vault manager of the William K. Everson Collection at the George Eastman Museum, from 1998 to 2000 and the nitrate vault manager of the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center at the museum from 2000 to 2010. In 2010, she became the collection manager of the Moving Image Department’s film and video collection, holdings of more than 100,000 reels in nitrate and safety stock. As an instructor in the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, she teaches the identification, storage, and inspection of motion picture film.

Jeffrey Stoiber, Assistant Curator, The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation
Jeff Stoiber has both his BA in Media Studies (1993) and his Masters of Library Science (1997) from the State University of New York at Buffalo, his hometown. While completing his MLS he interned at both the American Film Institute and the George Eastman Museum. The Eastman Museum internship led to his employment as the Administrator of the Selznick School a position he has held since 1997.

Patrick Tiernan, Associate Collection Manager
Patrick Tiernan is a Rochester native and a 2002 Film Studies graduate of SUNY College at Brockport. He has been projecting films at the The Little Theatre, The Cinema Theater and The Dryden Theatre since 2011. As Associate Collection Manager he helps manage the Museum's collection of motion picture films and film equipment. Since 2022, he has served as Nitrate Projection Supervisor in the Dryden Theatre.

Tyler Wallace, Administrator
Tyler Wallace became the Administrator of the Moving Image Department in 2023. He grew up in the Hudson Valley in downstate New York and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Film from Brooklyn College in 2014. He graduated with the class of 2021 from the Selznick School and completed his MA at the University of Rochester in 2022. He has a background in digital film exhibition and video editing.

Caroline Yeager, Associate Curator
Caroline Yeager has been a staff member since 1998, when she graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. After 25 years in the MID, she retired from her formal administrative duties and now works on a project to research, scan, and annotate the department’s historical records. She has 25 years of experience in the performing arts, an MFA from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, and a BS from SUNY Brockport, NY. As associate curator, she oversaw grant writing and administration to support the department’s collections; developed exhibitions for public access; taught curatorial management in the Selznick School; been an Assistant Director of the Nitrate Picture Show, and the Responsible Officer for the museum’s Exchange Visitor Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. She is a member of AMIA and SEAPAVAA and co-chaired AMIA’s Advocacy Committee for eight years.

Joshua Yocum, Preservation Officer
Josh was raised in Rocky Hill, CT and received his BA in Film and Philosophy from Clark University. He graduated from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2014 and completed the MA portion of the program in 2015. Since graduating, Josh has worked at Wesleyan University's Davison Art Center and Northwestern University Library's Repository and Digital Curation Department where his work focused on digitization and digital preservation. Josh joined the Museum as a Preservation Officer in 2022.

Victoria DuBois, Dryden Theatre Manager
Victoria received her BA in Liberal Studies from Providence College, and worked as a freelance video editor for over 10 years. She has worked at libraries and museums in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, her home state. Before coming to Rochester, Victoria worked for The Old Colony Historical Society, where she completed a range of archival and curatorial work. She graduated from the Selznick School in 2025, and received her MA from the University of Rochester in 2026. Outside of her work at the Dryden, Victoria operates an antiques and vintage collectibles business.