Assistant Professor, Michigan Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Fellow
About
Jessica Ruffin is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media with a two-year appointment. Her research focuses on cinematic spectatorial theory in constellation with continental aesthetic philosophy and media archaeology, with particular interest in diaspora studies, ethics, early and international cinema history, avant-gardes, embodied experience, and mysticism.
Her current book project, A World Divided, draws on the aesthetics and ethics of Arthur Schopenhauer in order to reframe concepts of aesthetic experience and historical consciousness in early media theory in light of their ethical promise. She is concurrently developing an article and video project on Black breath and erasure in intellectual and cinema histories of modernity. At Michigan, she looks forward to teaching courses that bring these historical and philosophical projects into dialogue with the pressing ethical questions of contemporary media environments.
Jessica is former editor of Millennium Film Journal (2008-2013) and qui parle (2018-2019) and currently serves on the board of Aubin Pictures, a nonprofit social justice media company based in New York City. She will join the Literature Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Assistant Professor in 2023.
