Research Expertise and Interest

Cinema and technological change, cinema and modernity, computer-generated images and contemporary cinema, digital visual effects, stereoscopic 3D cinema and media, the history and theory of special effects, cinema in transition, American film history, modernity and early cinema., cinema and globalization, cinema and the environment/elements

Research Description

Kristen Whissel received her Ph.D from Brown University. Her research focuses on silent American cinema, contemporary cinema, stereoscopic 3D cinema and media, special/visual effects, modernity and moving image cultures, film aesthetics, American film history, postwar American cinema and atomic modernity, cinema and globalization, cinema and the environment/elements. Her books include Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema (Duke UP, 2007) and  Spectacular Visual Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema (Duke UP, 2012). She is currently writing a book on stereoscopic 3D cinema titled, Hollywood's 'Impalpable Phantoms': Postwar 3D Cinema and Atomic Modernity. She has published articles in New Review of Film & Television Studies, Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, Camera Obscura, Journal of Visual Culture,Film Criticism, and Screen.