Deirdre Boyle
MA, Antioch College. MSW, New York University. Associate Professor, Media Studies Program. 

She is a video historian, media critic, curator, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She is author of Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited (1997), among other books, and has written numerous essays for Afterimage, Cineaste, Millennium Film Journal, Television Quarterly, and Wide Angle, among others. She has been a guest curator for the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Brussels Video Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). She has received an Ace Award for Best Documentary Series on Cable TV (1988), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983), a Fulbright Fellowship (1992) and an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (1997).

She has taught at City College, Fordham University, Rutgers University, New York University, and Moscow State University. Her current interests focus on documentary; death, trauma and loss; and media consumption and the body.

Elizabeth Ellsworth 
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin

Professor, Media Studies Program and member of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies faculty. Research and teaching areas include media theory and criticism, history and criticism of documentary film, media and social change, design of mediated learning environments, uses of media to teach about and across social and cultural difference. Formerly Professor of Educational Communications Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she also has taught as Visiting Professor in the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Programs at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has published extensively, producing five books including Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy (Routledge,2004). Her current work draws from emerging theories of pragmatic action and change to address how humans use media to do things in the world. As a co-founder of a nonprofit media arts collaboration (www.smudgestudio.org) she is translating the results of her research and writing into a variety of media forms, exhibitions, and projects.

Annie Howell 
MFA, New York University.

Assistant Professor and Assistant Chair for Documentary Studies, Department of Media Studies and Film. Annie J. Howell has written and directed several short fiction and nonfiction films and has exhibited them internationally on the film festival circuit, including screenings at SXSW, Newport, Full Frame, Clermont-Ferrand, MadCat and SilverDOCS. Her films have been screened on the Sundance Channel, PBS, and the Independent Film Channel. Her recent work includes a feature-length screenplay in development with Trademark Films, the recipient of a 2005 Screenwriters' Colony fellowship, and a webisode, Sparks, at www.sparks-series.com. Before coming to The New School, Professor Howell taught at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and the Duke Program in Film and Video.

Michelle Materre
MEd, Boston College.

Ms. Materre’s professional background is in the independent film and television industry as producer, writer, arts administrator, outreach consultant, distribution/marketing specialist and teacher. She was a staff writer/producer for Henry Hampton’s Blackside Productions, and an assistant story editor for MGM/UA in the feature film division, early in her career. As a founding partner of KJM3 Entertainment Group, Inc., a film distribution and marketing company that specialized in multicultural film and television projects, Ms. Materre directly managed the marketing and positioning of 23 films including the successful theatrical release of Daughters of the Dust, the highly acclaimed film by Julie Dash, as well as L’Homme Sur Les Quais (The Man By The Shore) by Raoul Peck. For the past twelve years, Ms. Materre has been the lead curator of the Creatively Speaking film series known for enlghtening substantial audiences to the work of independent filmmakers. Ms. Materre currently serves as an independent media consultant to filmmakers and film/video organizations on issues related to distribution strategy, fundraising, marketing, outreach, and programming and production issues. Ms. Materre was awarded the “University Distinguished Teaching Award” in September 2005, and was the recent recipient of The 2008 Pen and Brush Achievement Award for Women in the Arts.

Lewis Erskine
Lewis Erskine has edited films and television for more than 20 years. His credits include the Emmy nominated Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple; Sundance and IDA award winning The Murder of Emmett Till; and two and a half episodes of the Ken Burns series Jazz: A History of American Music. In Lewis' latest gig, he has happily returned to working with Bill Moyers on his weekly PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal.

Sari Gilman
Sari Gilman has been a documentary film editor for over 10 years. She received a Primetime Emmy nomination for her work on Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which aired on HBO and was directed by Rory Kennedy. She has worked on such award-winning film as Regret to Inform (Barbara Sonneborn, Janet Cole), which won Best Director at Sundance in 1999 and aired nationally on PBS, and Paragraph 175 (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman), which won Best Director at Sundance in 2000, and aired on HBO. Another project, Emmy-nominated Blue Vinyl (Judith Helfand, Dan Gold) premiered at Sundance 2002, where Dan Gold won Best Cinematographer. The film aired on HBO’s America Undercover series in May, 2002. Other programs she has edited have appeared on HBO, AMC, A&E and PBS, including a history of Las Vegas and a history of New Orleans, both for PBS’ American Experience. Ms. Gilman also produced and directed 2 radio documentaries, which aired on NPR’s All Things Considered. Fish Out of Water is the story of a gay seminary student’s experience at a Promise Keeper’s convention. Ode to Joy is about a community chorus that sings Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on New Year’s Eve every year. She is also directing a film about a retirement community that has 15,000 in it.

Peter Schnall
Six-time Emmy Award winning documentary producer and cinematographer. After spending ten years as an independent producer/cinematographer, Schnall served as a Producer and then Senior Producer of the long-running National Geographic Television series “Explorer” before forming Partisan Pictures in New York City. Celebrating its 10th Anniversary, Partisan Pictures recently produced the 13-part History Channel series The Revolution, as well as the independently produced  PBS film, This is a Game Ladies, which followed the 2001 women’s basketball season at Rutgers University. Other film projects include Air Force One, which granted unprecedented access to the president’s plane and crew, and Oprah in South Africa, Oprah’s humanitarian sojourn to South Africa to draw attention to the plight of children with AIDS. For more info on Partisan Pictures, visit partisanpictures.com.

Cynthia Wade
NYC-based documentary filmmaker. Her short documentary Freeheld won the 2008 Academy Award in the Short Documentary category as well as the 2008 Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, also film awards in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Denver. Wade directed and shot the award-winning HBO documentary Shelter Dogs, which was broadcast in seven countries, as well as the 1999 Cinemax Reel Life documentary Grist for the Mill. She was co-producer and the principal verite cinematographer for the 1998 PBS documentary Taken In: The Lives of America's Foster Children, which was awarded a Columbia-DuPont Award for Excellence in Journalism. She has been cameraperson for PBS, HBO/Cinemax, Bravo, AMC, MTV, A&E, Discovery, TNT, Oxygen, LOGO and The History Channel. Wade runs a documentary production company in New York City, where she lives with her husband and two children.