Bio

Jennifer Lynn Peterson (PhD, University of Chicago) is a cinema and media historian, educator, and writer living in Los Angeles.

I’m the author of Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Duke University Press, 2013). My scholarly articles have been published in journals including Representations, Feminist Media Histories, JCMS – Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Camera Obscura, The Moving Image, and Getty Research Journal. I have published chapters in several edited anthologies including The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, Ends of Cinema, Hollywood on Location, Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm, The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender, and Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States. My film, art, and book reviews have been published in Critical Inquiry, JCMS, Millennium Film Journal, Texte zur Kunst, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Artforum.com, and Contemporary Art Review LA (Carla). Previously I was a tenured Associate Professor in the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. After returning to my home state of California, I’m now a Professor in the Filmmaking Program at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, where I teach courses on film and media history and analysis. I’m also a Member of the Board of Los Angeles Filmforum. I was born and grew up in Santa Barbara, CA. I’m the first in my family to attend college. I live in Northeast Los Angeles (unceded Gabrieliño/Tongva land) with my spouse, two kids, a big dog, and a school of small fish. I’m currently completing my second book, Conservation Motion Pictures: Silent-Era Cinema and the Production of Nature, under contract with Columbia University Press. Other current projects include new writing on ecology in experimental film and media and a textbook on Media and the Environment.