Dr. Jeffrey Adams
Associate Professor
Dr. Jeffrey Adams is an Associate Professor of Media Studies. Dr. Adams offers genre, auteur, and critical writing courses in the Film and Television Studies Concentration including Studies in Media Genres: Film Noir. His interests in film studies include film noir, German new wave cinema, Weimar expressionism (horror), and literary adaptation. Dr. Adams has a PhD in German from Northwestern University and has done undergraduate and graduate work at German universities in Göttingen and Stuttgart. His scholarly interests range from film criticism to German and European literary history, philosophy (German Idealism, Nietzsche, existentialism), and psychoanalysis. His book publications on German literature include Eduard Mörike's Orplid. Myth and the Poetic Mind, Mörike's Muses. Critical Essays on Eduard Mörike (ed.), and Mimetic Desire. Narcissism in German Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism (co-ed.). He has published articles on Goethe, Kafka, Freud, and Patrick Süskind in journals such as The German Quarterly, The Germanic Review, and Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift. His latest publication is "Orson Welles' The Trial: Film Noir and the Kafkaesque" in College Literature.
Matthew Barr, MFA
Full Professor
Matthew Barr. has always had a deep interest in filmmaking: he made his first 16-mm film with a Bell & Howell wind-up camera when he was 13. He holds a BA from San Francisco State College and an MFA from UCLA in film production. He has worked as a still photographer, been a freelance screenwriter, worked on an organic farm, driven a rig cross country, and spent five seasons with a traveling carnival show.
As a screenwriter, he co-wrote the scripts for two movies produced in Hollywood, Deadly Blessing (1981) and The Forgotten (1989), as well as other scripts that were optioned but never saw the light of day. While teaching at the University of Miami In 1990, he moved into documentary production with Crimes of Hate, a film produced in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League as a training tool for police departments in recognizing and combating hate crimes.
Barr has made three feature-length documentary films that have won acclaim and are in the collections of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress as well as online at Folkstreams.net. Crimes of Hate and Wild Caught have both had extensive use as political advocacy films.
He has taught film production at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro since 1994. Together with his wife, Cornelia Wright Barr, he founded the Unheard Voices Project in 2006.
Barr is an Associate Professor who teaches screenwriting, film production and studies courses on both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Dr. Geoffrey Baym
Associate Professor
Geoffrey Baym (Ph.D., University of Utah, 2001) is an associate professor interested in the intersections among news media, public affairs, politics, and popular culture. His classes and research explore the nature of the media, and the ways in which different kinds of media influence how we know about, talk about, and act within the world. In the Department of Media Studies, he teaches courses such as Media Theory, News Analysis, and Video Journalism. In his scholarship, Baym writes about the changing styles and standards of news media and American political discourse. He is the author of From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News (Paradigm, 2009) and numerous journal articles and book chapters on The Daily Show and other hybrid forms of public affairs media.
Dr. David Cook
Professor/Department Head
David A. Cook received his Ph.D in English Literature from the University of Virginia in 1971, but quickly migrated from literary studies into film. He founded and chaired Film Studies Department at Emory University for 20 years before coming to UNCG in 2007 as the Head of the Dept of Broadcasting and Cinema, renamed the Dept of Media Studies in 2009. He is the author of A History of Narrative Film, Fourth Edition (W. W. Norton, 2004) and Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979, Volume 9 in Scribner’s History of the American Cinema Project (Scribner's, 2000; University of California Press, 2002), as well as numerous articles in both film and literary studies. He is also the author of the "Film History" entry in the Macropedia of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Julie Cullen
Administrative Assistant
Julie Cullen provides assistance in the Department of Broadcasting and Cinema to the Department Head, faculty, and students. She has served in this position since August, 1992. Julie has worked for the University of North Carolina Greensboro for twenty years, having previously served at The Weatherspoon Art Gallery. She also worked at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette for six years before moving to Greensboro in 1989.
Office Phone: 336-334-5360
Frank Donaldson, MA
Instructor/Director of Undergraduate Studies
Frank Donaldson is a former broadcast journalist and sports color commentator who teaches a variety of courses in the Media Studies program including radio and television announcing, sportscasting, broadcast programming, media organization and management, and situation comedy both writing and studies courses. Frank serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of the Internship program for the department. Frank typically travels to Los Angeles once a year where contacts in the television industry and alumni arrange for him to observe the production of television programs. Frank has been the guest of the executive producers for Friends, Home Improvement, Third Rock from the Sun, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Soup, Spin City, Will and Grace, That 70’s Show, and Big Bang Theory among others. On occasion Frank has been able to have students accompany him to visits to the set. Frank also tries to stay in touch with graduates for the department holding alumni dinners in New York City and Los Angeles.
Dr. Emily D. Edwards
Professor
Emily D. Edwards has been a television news reporter, producer, copywriter, and television art director for NBC and ABC affiliates in Alabama and Tennessee. She was the Director of the Broadcast Sequence at the University of Alabama in Birmingham until she joined the faculty at UNCG in 1987. The producer or director of more than sixteen films, Edwards has also published articles on documentary filmmaking, popular music, the occult and popular culture in journals such as The Journal of Film and Video, TDR, Southern Speech Communication Journal, Southern Folklore, Sex Roles, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Journal, Popular Music and Society, and The International Documentary Association Magazine, among others. She has contributed chapters to books such as Current Research in Film, Hauntings and Poltergeists, and Adolescents and Their Music. Her chapter “The Transgressive Toke: Art and Misdemeanor in Deadhead Imagery” will be published in the book, From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse in 2010. Edwards’ own book, Metaphysical Media: Occult Experience in Popular Culture (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005) is an in-depth discussion of the presentation of a wide spectrum of the occult in popular media and serves as a comprehensive sourcebook of movies and television programs that deal with supernatural characters and themes. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Film and Video.
Edwards’ documentary and narrative films have received awards from Boomtown Film and Music Festival, Moondance Film Festival, The George Lindsey Film Festival, Accolade, and the BEA National Festival of Media Arts, UFVA Faculty competitions, Bare Bones International Film Festival (among others) as well as screenings through festivals, distribution companies, and television broadcasts nationwide. She may be best known for the documentaries, Deadheads: An American Subculture (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1990); Wondrous Events (Penn State Media, 1995), and Wondrous Healing (Stanley Stern Parallel Lines, 2005). Edwards has received awards for screenwriting in the University Film and Video Production Screenwriting competitions, Twin Rivers, the Broadcast Education Association (BEA), Bare Bone International Screenwriting competitions among others. She was a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship competition in 2002. With musician Max Drake, Edwards completed a music CD of music created for the narrative feature film, Bone Creek, which won the 2009 Moondance Film Festival award for the best soundtrack. Tracks from the CD have aired on radio stations Internationally, including Radio Holstebro in Denmark, 98.9 FM Brisbane in Australia, and CKIA-FM (Montreal, Canada) among others.
Anthony Fragola, MPW
Professor
Anthony Fragola, Professor, has a BA from Columbia University, an MA from UNC Chapel Hill in Comparative Literature, and a MPW (Master of Professional Writing) from the University of Southern California. He teaches primarily in the area of screen writing, auteur directors--European filmmakers, and various genre courses such as Literature and Film. He has published two books: The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on his Films, co-authored with Roch C. Smith, and a collection of short stories, Feast of the Dead. His short stories have appeared in literary magazines both in the US and abroad, including England and Malaysia; and several have been aired on the BBC World Service Short Story Series. His fiction has also won awards, including The Greensboro Review literary award and the Aniello Lauri Award from Voices in Italian Americana. He has published scholarly articles in a variety of journals, including Symposium. The New Novel Review, and Film/Literature Quarterly. His films and videos have been aired on UNC-TV and shown in festivals such as the Melbourne International Film Festival. His current research interests include interactive digital narratives.
Dr. Michael Frierson
Associate Professor/Director of Graduate Studies
Michael Frierson is an Associate Professor and the author of Clay Animation: American Highlights 1908 to the Present (New York: Twayne, 1994), which won the McLaren-Lambart Award from the National Film Board of Canada for the Best Scholarly Book on Animation. He teaches film production, animation, dance on video and editing. He has produced short films for Nickleodeon, Children’s Television Workshop, MSN Video, and AT&T Blueroom. He recently completed an hour-long film documentary on New Orleans photographer Clarence John Laughlin. His latest film is FBI KKK, a personal, one hour documentary about his father, Dargan Frierson, an FBI agent in Greensboro, NC, and his informant George Franklin Dorsett, the Imperial Kludd, or chaplain, of the United Klans of America. www.fbi-kkk.com
Brett Ingram, MFA
Associate Professor
Formerly a journalist, physics teacher, and electrical engineer on the Space Shuttle Main Engine Program, Brett Ingram has been making films since 1990. His short documentaries and animated films have screened at more than 150 festivals, winning thirty awards collectively and screening on regional PBS.
Ingram’s first documentary feature, Monster Road, won sixteen awards (including “Best Documentary” at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival) and screened at more than ninety festivals and cinema venues internationally before premiering on Sundance Channel in 2005. Monster Road is now available on DVD, Netflix, and iTunes.
Ingram has been awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship (1995) and a Film and Video Artist Fellowship (2002) from the North Carolina Arts Council. In 2007 he was awarded a Fellowship in Filmmaking from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Ingram teaches filmmaking (cinematography, editing, sound design, and documentary production) in the Department of Media Studies where he was named "Faculty Member of the Year" in 2006. He joined the Department of Media Studies in 2004. He has also taught filmmaking at Wake Forest University and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He has recently completed Rocaterrania, a documentary feature about the secret world of scientific illustrator and visionary artist Renaldo Kuhler.
Rocaterrania has screened at more than 30 festivals and cinema venues in five countries so far, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, Cinequest San Jose Film Festival, and the Buenos Aires International Film Festival.
Ingram has directed documentary programs for Animal Planet and National Geographic Channel, and is the sole founder, owner, and operator of Bright Eye Pictures, a film production and distribution company.
Brad Jones
Adjunct Instructor
Brad Jones is an adjunct instructor in Media Studies focusing on broadcast news. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field as a reporter and anchor. Jones has covered everything from hurricanes to the Final Four to the Summer Olympic Games. He has a B.S. from East Tennessee State University and a M.A. from the University of Georgia. Brad is currently the morning and noon news anchor at WGHP FOX8 in High Point, NC.
Carol Keesee, MFA
Adjunct Instructor
Carol Keesee joined the Media Studies faculty in 2005 and teaches courses in media writing, film and television criticism, producing, and film appreciation. Her media interests also include ethics and values in communication and the roles of women and minorities in the media. Before coming to UNCG, she taught film and broadcasting classes at High Point University, Elon College and Guilford Technical College.
She’s written and produced segments for The Furniture Show on Home and Garden Television (HGTV), television commercials, nonprofit programs, and training videos for clients in the Triad area. Her career also includes positions in academic publishing, hospital administration, arts management, and nonprofit fundraising.
Keesee is a Greensboro native and Spartan alumnus who earned both her MFA in Drama (Broadcasting and Cinema) and her BA in Religious Studies from The University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Dr. Seung-Hyun Lee
Assistant Professor
Dr. Seung-Hyun Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She received her Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. She has been a reporter for a monthly magazine on cable TV and a weekly newspaper on politics in Seoul, Korea. She has also taught Korean language and culture and video journalism of technology art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Her main research areas include the impacts, roles and users of digital and interactive media, such as the Internet, digital television and mobile multimedia, in the social, national, and international context; online journalism and citizen journalism; new media use; health communications; and community. She particularly focuses on mobile multimedia use and mobile TV, which was the subject of her doctoral dissertation and expertise area, and the research project awarded grants from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in 2006.
She teaches ‘Digital Media’ and ‘Online Journalism,’ including a webpage creation. She is expanding her teaching and researching area into mobile journalism and citizen journalism for local communities as well as global media use, particularly international mobile multimedia use in developed and developing countries. Currently she is writing an article on mobile technology convergence for a book chapter. Beyond her teaching and researching, she is also interested in advising students for study abroad, creating global institutional linkages, and serving for education, information delivery, and multicultural environment of local communities.
Christina Nova
Adjunct Instructor
Christina Nova studied film production with Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned a Masters degree in Urban Studies and City Planning. She has worked for CBS News in New York as a producer, unit manager and camera operator for such shows as 60 Minutes, Magazine, and CBS Reports. A series she worked on for CBS Reports, the American Way of Cancer, won an Emmy. She produced the only television interview with Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She has also worked on feature documentaries, such as Pumping Iron.
Her production companies: Mercury Films and Harvard Square Productions, produced twelve independent documentary films on such subjects as Weather Research, for the National Science Foundation, and on the impact of development in Southern Vermont as well as various documentaries on education and urban issues. Several of her documentaries aired on Vermont Public Television on subjects ranging from waste management to the work of Vermont Artists.
She has taught courses in film and video production, screen writing, and film history for the last twenty-five years at such schools as Bennington College, Landmark College, and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Dr. Kimberlianne Podlas, Esq.
Associate Professor
After graduating from the University of Buffalo School of Law, Kimberlianne Podlas practiced criminal appellate law in New York City. She argued more than 100 cases, including several in the state’s high court. In 1997, on a 1 year leave of absence, she was named a Civic Education Project Fellow (and subsequently a Fulbright) and moved to post-communist Romania to teach and work on higher-education reform.
In 2004, Podlas joined the Department of Media Studies where teaches courses in media law and pop culture. Her research considers the relationship between television’s legal lore and the public’s understandings of law, attitudes about it, and how these translate into behaviors. She has won several awards for her research and has published more than 30 articles, including: The “CSI Effect”: Exposing The Media Myth; ‘Law & Order’s Impact On Public Perceptions Of Law And Order; Blame Judge Judy: The Effect of Television Courtrooms On Jurors, Primetime Crimes: Are Reality Television Programs Illegal Contests In Violation Of Federal Law, and contributed to the ABA’s recent book, Lawyers In Your Living Room (2009).
Ken Terres
Instructor/Engineer
After an extensive professional career in radio (WTMR-AM) and television as producer/director at (WYOU-TV, WGGT-TV, WCTI-TV). Ken Terres moved into the academic world as the Television Studio Production Manager at North Carolina A & T State University (1991-97). He joined the Media Studies faculty in March of 1997 as the Engineer and Facilities Manager for the Department of Media Studies. Recent accomplishments include the continual upgrade and re-engineering of the Carmichael Building and main TV studio to support the department’s production classes.