Bush Mama

Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak has been Director of UCLA Film & Television Archive and Professor for Critical Studies since 2007. He was previously Director of Archives & Collections at Universal Studios, Director of the Munich Filmmuseum and Senior Curator, George Eastman House. He has held professorships at the University of Rochester, the Munich Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen and the University of Salzburg. His book publications include: “Film and Photo in the 1920s” (1979), “Helmar Leski – Pioneer of Israeli Cinema” (1983), “Anti-Nazi-Films Made by German Jewish Refugees in Hollywood” (1985), “Making Images Move: Photographers and Avant-Garde Cinema” (1997), “Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde 1919-1945” (1995) and “The Dream Merchants: Making and Selling Films in Hollywood’s Golden Age” (1989). He has also published 250 articles and reviews in all manner of film historical subjects in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish and Hebrew publications. Named an Academy Scholar in 2006, he has just completed a book on the designer Saul Bass, “The Hand and the Eye.”

Anna Everett is a Professor of Film, Television and New Media Studies at UCSB. Her publications include the books Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949; Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, for the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media, Youth, and Learning program; her 2009 award-winning book Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace; and the edited volume Pretty People. She is a two-time recipient of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, among others. She is completing a book on President Obama, social media and millennials.

Ross Melnick specializes in media industry history and analysis, film, radio, and television history, archival theory and practice, silent cinema, early radio and media convergence, newsfilm, and U.S. and global film exhibition. His most recent book is American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908-1935 (Columbia University Press, 2012). His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Film History, The Moving Image, and Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (forthcoming).