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Ivy Roberts

Cinema studies professor

Education

  • P.H.D., media, art, and text, Virginia Commonwealth University
  • M.L.I.S., library and information science, University of Maryland
  • M.A., film studies & Culture, Antioch University
  • B.A., film/video studies/cultural history, Marlboro College

Credentials

Teaching experience

  • Professor of art history, 2024–present, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
  • Adjunct instructor, 2023–24, Montgomery College
  • Adjunct instructor, 2018–24, Southern New Hampshire University
  • Adjunct professor, 2017–24, University of Maryland University College
  • Adjunct instructor, 2013–20, Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Teaching fellow, 2019, John Tyler Community College
  • Adjunct instructor, 2011–12, Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College
  • Adjunct instructor, 2011, Community College of Vermont, Brattleboro
  • Teaching assistant, 2010, European Graduate School, Saas Fee, Switzerland

Professional experience

  • Library services technician, 2022–24, Priddy Library, Universities at Shady Grove, Rockville, MD
  • Assistant acquisitions editor, 2021–22, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD
  • Lesson writer — humanities, literature, and history, 2015–18, Study.com
  • Graduate assistant, 2015–16, Humanities Research Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
  • Academic technologist/multimedia specialist, 2012–13, Keene State College, Keene, NH
  • Program assistant, 2011–12, Difference and Media Project (Office of Multicultural Affairs), Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
  • Editorial assistant, 2010–11, Critical Point of View: Wikipedia Initiative, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
  • Instructional support specialist, 2010, University of Maryland University College, Largo, MD
  • Lead instructor, 2007–09, Indie Programs, Film/Media studies NPO at Onteora High School, Boiceville, NY

Awards, recognitions, and honors

  • Honorable Mention, Popular Culture Association, for Futures of the Past: An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Critical Essays, McFarland Press, 2021
  • Chancellor's Teaching Fellowship, John Tyler Community College, 2019
  • Phi Kappa Phi National Honors Society, VCU, 2016–17

Organizations

  • Modern Language Association
  • Society for Cinema and Media Studies
  • Popular Culture Association
  • Society for American Archivists
  • American Library Association

Publications and presentations

Articles

  • "Gernsback's Challenge: Pseudoscience, Science Fiction, and Perpetual Motion." Apocryphal Technologies (Forthcoming, 2024).
  • "Superpsychos in the Asylum: Superheroes through the lens of Mad Studies." Collecting Thoughts (Forthcoming 2023).
  • "Artificial Horizon: Blind Flight in the History of Virtual Reality." International Journal of Stereo and Immersive Media 6(1) (Dec 2022).
  • "Wonderland and the Wasteland: The Colorfully Dirty Mise en Scene in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." In A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam, edited by Ian Bekker, Sabine Planka, and Philip Van Der Merwe. Lexington Books (2022).
  • "Who do you think is powering that spotlight?": Social mobility and resistance in Black Mirror's 'Fifteen Million Merits.' Vector (Feb 2022).
  • "The Dirty Industrial Rivalry That Determined Whether America's Electricity Would be AC or DC." Zocalo Public Square (June 2019).
  • "'Edison's Telephonoscope': The Visual Telephone and the Satire of Electric Light Mania," Early Popular Visual Culture 15.1 (February 2017), 1-25.

Books

  • Visions of Electric Media in the Victorian and Machine Ages, Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Edited books

  • Futures of the Past: An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Critical Essays, McFarland Press, 2020.

Conference presentations

  • "Superpsychos: Psychotic Superheroes through the lens of Madness Studies." Popular Culture Association, San Antonio, TX, April 5-8, 2023.
  • "'White Guys are Not on Trend': Race and Shapeshifting in Neil Gaiman's American Gods." Popular Culture Association, Seattle, WA, April 13-26, 2022.
  • "The Persistence of Noise: Analog Screens in the Digital TV Era." MLA, Toronto, ON, January 7-10, 2021.
  • "Using Science Fiction in the Interdisciplinary Classroom." Berglund Seminar Series, VCU Honors College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, September 14, 2020
  • "Tinker Culture: Practicing the Craft of Radiovision in 1920s America." Media in Transition 10: "Democracy and Digital Media." Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, May 17-18, 2019.
  • "Spell-casting as Illusion-Dance: The Look and Laws of Physical Magic in The Magicians." Escape Velocity/Museum of Science Fiction: "Do You Believe in Magic." National Harbor, MD, May 25-27, 2018.
  • "Thomas Edison's Hypnotic Machine: Technology, Science Fiction, and Progress." South Atlantic Modern Language Association: "High Art/Low Art: Borders and Boundaries in Popular Culture." Atlanta, GA, November 3-5, 2017.
  • "Image-Sounds and Sound Pictures: Innovation and Standardization in Late 1920s Film and Television." Film & History Conference: "Journeys, Detours, Breakdowns," University of Wisconsin - Madison, November 4-8, 2015.
  • "'Printing by Lightning:' Ambiguities of Presence and the Victorian Copying Telegraph." Virginia Humanities Conference: "The Humanities and Its Bodies," Longwood University, Farmville, VA, March 21-22, 2014.