Shelleen Greene, associate professor of cinema and media studies at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, has been awarded the 2020-2021 Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the University of Leeds, in England.
As part of the award, Greene will be based at Leeds’ Center for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures, which sponsors cultural events, seminar series, conferences and research projects in all aspects of world cinemas and digital cultures.
During her fellowship, Greene will expand upon her research areas of transnational racial and ethnic identity formations in global visual cultures through her book in progress, “Embodiment and Black Aesthetics.” This book will explore African diasporic cultural productions in new media that “offer moral explorations and alternative histories of the technological, scientific and political conditions of our current moment of globalization.”
She plans to continue research and chapter development on the book project through public lectures, teaching modules and curriculum development conducted at the Center for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures and the graduate program in film studies at the University of Leeds, as well as the Center for Race, Education and Decoloniality at Leeds Beckett University.
Greene’s primary research interests include Italian cinema, Black European studies and digital feminist studies. Her previous book, “Equivocal Subjects: Constructions of Racial and National Identity in the Italian Cinema,” examines the representation of mixed-race subjects of Italian and African descent in the Italian cinema. Within the book, she argues that the changing cultural representations of mixed-race identity reveal shifts in the country's conceptual paradigms of race and nation.
The Fulbright Program, established in 1946, is the most widely recognized international exchange program in the world, supported through an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress and by partner nations. Fulbright chairs are considered the most distinguished awards in the program, and approximately 40 are awarded each year.
