American University

Patricia Aufderheide is University Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center for Media and Social Impact. Her books include Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright (University of Chicago), with Peter Jaszi; Documentary: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford), The Daily Planet (University of Minnesota Press), and Communications Policy in the Public Interest (Guilford Press). She co-coordinates the Fair Use and Free Speech project at the Center with Prof. Peter Jaszi of the Washington College of Law. She has been a Fulbright and John Simon Guggenheim fellow and has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival. Aufderheide has received numerous journalism and scholarly awards, including a research award from the International Communication Association in 2011, Woman of Vision award from Women in Film and Video (DC) in 2010, a career achievement award in 2008 from the International Digital Media and Arts Association and the Scholarship and Preservation Award in 2006 from the International Documentary Association.

Randall Blair is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. He is a professional filmmaker who teaches courses in producing, directing, script writing and film production. He has created award-winning films, including documentaries, dramatic films, and educational/ corporate videos. These have been shown on PBS stations, international television networks and at numerous film festivals and film markets including Berlin and Sundance. His awards include the Washington Peer Awards for Best Director and Best Scriptwriter, the Pinnacle Award for Excellence in Media Education and two CINE Golden Eagles.

John Douglass is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. He has been at American for more than 30 years and through most of this time has served as director of the film and media arts division. His contributions to the Washington, DC media community were acknowledged with the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Television Association (ITVA-DC). Douglass has twice served as chair of the Faculty Senate and is currently chair of the Institutional Budget & Benefits Committee. He teaches screenwriting and guides graduate thesis projects

With nearly 40 years of teaching and filmmaking, and 250 projects, his documentaries appear on PBS, the Discovery Channels, and National Geographic, among many other outlets. Awards include a Daytime Emmy for Best Cinematography and the Mountain Spirit award from Mountainfilm in Telluride. His teaching focuses on theory, production and emerging media. His favorite classes include Classroom-in-the-Wild: Extreme HD Alaska, and The Practice of Environmentalism that takes students to the Galapagos Islands.

The PBS series “The Human Spark,” hosted by Alan Alda, and directed and photographed by Engel (pbs.org/humanspark) won the prestigious AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for In-Depth Reporting.

“Potato Heads: Keepers of the Crop” premiered at the DC Environmental Film Festival and has played in festivals around the world.

Engel is a member of the Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America–East, International Documentary Association, National Association of Science Writers, and the Potomac Appalachia Trail Club–Mountaineering Division.

DIrector, Foreign Correspondence Network
Director, Backpack Journalism Project
Bill Gentile is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. He is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker at American University, where he brings 30 years of field experience and professional contacts to the next generation of communicators. In 2008, Gentile traveled with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24th MEU) in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province. The film he produced and shot, Afghanistan: The Forgotten War, was broadcast by NOW on PBS. Later in the year he shot and produced a story on America’s nursing shortage, also broadcast on PBS. In December C-SPAN broadcast, The White House: Inside America’s Most Famous Home, on which he worked as Documentary Consultant. Gentile teaches Photojournalism, Foreign Correspondence and Backpack Documentary.

Lindsay Grace is a professor, game designer and researcher. He directs the AU Game Lab and Studio. His game designs have received awards and recognition from the Games for Change Festival, Meaningful Play Conference , ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community and others. He has published more than 25 papers, articles and book chapters on games in the last 5 years. His creative work has been selected for showcase in more than seven countries and 12 states. Lindsay’s career includes teaching 81 courses over 10 years and more than 30+ presentations in Asia, the Americas and Europe. As the former Armstrong Professor at Miami University, he lead a top 25 game design program as ranked by Princeton Review. There he also founded the Persuasive Play Lab, a studio and research group for the production and analysis of games to change people’s interests, activities and opinions. In 2013 his game, Wait, was selected for the 10th Anniversary Games for Change Festival’s Hall of Fame, as one of the 5 best games for social impact in the last decade. Lindsay has served industry as an independent consultant, web designer, software developer, entrepreneur, business analyst and writer.

Leena Jayaswal is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. She is head of the photography concentration. Her photography has been nationally recognized in galleries around the country. She has worked with famed photographer, Mary Ellen Mark. Her films have been screened in various film festivals around the country. An Impression: Dischord Records was honored as the Best Selected Juror Film at the 2nd Annual Small International Film Festival at the Berkeley Art Center, in California. Crossing Lines was picked up for national distribution to public television affiliates around the country and has been shown on 70 different stations as well as numerous juried international film festivals. This film won numerous awards, including Best American Documentary at the Heart of England Film Festival and The Bronze Palm Award, Mexico International Film Festival. She was awarded the prestigious Gracie Allen Award from the American Women in Radio and Television. Crossing Lines is available for distribution by New Day Films.

Larry Kirkman is an Executive Producer of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and a Professor of Film and Media Arts in the School of Communication at American University. He teaches courses on social documentary and the history of cinematic arts for MA/MFA filmmakers. He is serving as lead faculty for experiential learning and teaches a Senior Professional Internship course. As dean of the School of Communication, 2001-2012, he directed and developed programs in Journalism, Film and Media Arts, Strategic Communication, Political Communication, Communication Studies, and International Media. He helped establish centers for innovation in public service media, including Investigative Reporting Workshop, Center for Media and Social Impact and Center for Environmental Filmmaking, and created programs with a wide-range of media partners, including The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC, Sony, and New America Media. His work in media for public knowledge and action has included public television documentaries and social advertising campaigns — Connect for Kids with the Advertising Council, which received $300 million in donated media, and Union Yes for the AFL-CIO. He chaired OneWorld.org, produced the American Film Institute’s National Video Festival and Benton Foundation’s International Advocacy Video Conference, and co-edited a series of media guides, “Strategic Communications for Nonprofits.” His interests include social issue documentaries with high impact audience engagement campaigns and hybrid media at the intersection of documentary and fiction.

Brigid Maher is a tenured, associate professor of Film and Media Arts. She is a filmmaker and writer who additionally heads the Emerging Media concentration in SOC’s Film and Media Arts Division. Her scholarly writing focuses on the interplay between traditional film and new media theories. Her award-winning narrative and documentary films have shown in festivals in the U.S. and abroad.

Her latest documentary, The Mama Sherpas, is a feature which follows nurse-midwives, the doctors they work with, and their patients, over the course of two years. The documentary will provide an intimate glimpse into what midwives can bring into the birthing process in the hospital system. Her previous film, Veiled Voices, focuses on the phenomenon of Muslim women religious leaders in Islam. Veiled Voices is distributed by Typecast Releasing in the United States and has screened on over 150 public television stations and three national networks. Al Jazeera Network recently acquired the film for broadcast in the Middle East and North Africa. The film has additional international distribution through TVF International and has screened in numerous international festivals in the United States and abroad.

Maher won a Fulbright Senior Award to teach broadcast media in Lebanon in the spring of 2005. She teaches digital media and editing courses for SOC.

Claudia Myers is a full-time tenured professor of Film and Media Arts. She just completed her third feature, “Fort Bliss” starring Michelle Monaghan and Ron Livingston. Prior to this she wrote and directed Kettle of Fish, which won a Nickelodeon Screenwriting Award and was cited as a standout romantic comedy in David Carr’s The New York Times festival overview. Below the Beltway, a feature film she produced, won the audience award at the Newport Beach Film Festival. She co-wrote Wild Oats, which won second place at the 2004 Slamdance Screenplay Competition and is currently in pre-production to star Shirley MacLaine and Alan Arkin, and with Andy Tennant attached to direct. Myers has written several other screenplays including Clinical, a finalist at the 2003 Sundance Filmmakers Lab and The Fourth Trimester, a quarter-finalist for the 2008 Page Awards. Her short films have earned recognition including Best Film at the Rosebud Film Festival, Best Film at the Silver Images Festival, Best Film at the Columbia Film Festival, New Line Cinema’s Development Award, and the Lifetime Student Filmmaker Award. Her short film, Buddy & Grace, screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002.

Chris Palmer is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. He is also a speaker, author, and environmental and wildlife film producer. He has swum with dolphins and whales, come face-to-face with sharks and Kodiak bears, camped with wolf packs, and waded hip-deep through Everglade swamps. Over the past thirty years, he has spearheaded the production of more than 300 hours of original programming for prime-time television and the IMAX film industry, work that won him and his colleagues many awards, including two Emmys and an Oscar nomination. And from this treasure trove of experience came his two controversial and entertaining memoirs about the dark side of wildlife filmmaking: Confessions of a Wildlife Filmmaker (2015) and Shooting in the Wild (2010). In 2004, Chris joined American University’s full-time faculty as Distinguished Film Producer in Residence at the School of Communication. There he founded, and currently directs, the Center for Environmental Filmmaking. Chris is also president of the One World One Ocean Foundation, a multimillion-dollar global media campaign to save the oceans. Visit ChrisPalmerOnline.com for more information about Chris Palmer.

Nina Shapiro-Perl is an award-winning producer and director who currently holds the position of Filmmaker-in-Residence at American University, where she teaches and leads the Community Voice Project. Before joining the faculty of American University, she worked for twenty years directing the Video Services Department and Greenhouse Cultural Program of the Service Employees International Union. Nina earned her doctorate from the University of Connecticut as a social anthropologist. Her first job outside academia was as a writer and producer at Maryland Public Television. Her latest film, “Through the Eye of the Needle” documents the art and story of Holocaust survivor and artist Esther Nisenthal Krinitz. It premiered at the Washington Jewish Film Festival where it won the Audience Favorite Award for Documentary. It has since won numerous awards including a 2012 CINE Golden Eagle for Documentary. artandremembrance.org

Maggie Burnette Stogner is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. She teaches in the Film and Media Arts division, bringing over 25 years of experience to the classroom. During her nine years at National Geographic, she produced, directed and wrote numerous documentaries, and was senior producer of the award-winning weekly programs Explorer and Ultimate Explorer. She has worked as an independent filmmaker since 2005. Projects include producing, directing and writing films and immersive media elements for the award-winning, internationally-touring Tutankhamun exhibitions; Real Pirates exhibition; the NEH/National Geographic Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures exhibition; the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibit; and the Smithsonian’s Roads of Arabia exhibit.

Maggie Burnette Stogner is also doing research on interactive museum design and has published articles in academic journals such as “Curator” and “The International Journal of New Media, Technology and the Arts”.

She is currently producing and directing a documentary on the death penalty, “Grave Injustice”, with author Rick Stack, who is also an associate professor at AU’s School of Communication.

Russell Williams is a full-time professor of Film and Media Arts. He joined SOC after an illustrious career in Hollywood, where he won two Academy Awards for his sound work on Glory and Dances with Wolves. He is an experienced producer, and his work has brought him honors and recognition from the mayors of both Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, from the American Film Institute, and from Cal State Northridge, Howard University and American University. He has taught at UCLA, USC and Cal. State Northridge.