Columbia University School of the Arts is pleased to announce several new faculty members joining the Film, Visual Arts, Theatre Arts and Writing Programs this Fall. Nico Baumbach and Rob King join the Film Program as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor, respectively. The Writing Program welcomes Susan Bernofsky as Associate Professor and Director of Literary Translation at Columbia, Richard Ford as Professor, and Heidi Julavits as Associate Professor of Practice. Michael Passaro (Assistant Professor) is the newly appointed head of the Stage Management Concentration in the Theatre Arts Program, and Anna Craycroft ('04) and Keith Mayerson join the Visual Arts Program as Assistant Professors of Practice.
Nico Baumbach holds a BA from Brown University and a PhD in Literature from Duke University. His research and teaching focus on critical theory, film theory, documentary and the intersection of aesthetic and political philosophy. Recent publications include “Nature Caught in the Act” in Comparative Critical Studies, “Rancière and the Fictional Capacity of Documentary” in New Review of Film and Television and “Rancière and the Persistence of Film Theory” in Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice (Wallflower Press, 2010). He is currently working on two projects: a book on the writings on cinema by contemporary Continental philosophers Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Slovoj Zizek; and a study of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.
Susan Bernofsky joins us from the Literary Translation MFA Program at CUNY. She is the recipient of the Looren Translation Prize (2009), a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2008-2009) and the Pen Translation Fund award (2005, 2007). Bernofsky is co-editor of the book In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means and her translations include Robert Walser's Berlin Stories and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. This year, she participated in the School of the Arts pilot Literary Translation Exchange Program, “Word for Word.”
Anna Craycroft is a 2004 alumna of the School of the Arts Visual Arts Program. She previously attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught at Columbia University School of the Arts and Maryland Institute College of Art. Craycroft has had several solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and she has been a Visiting Artist at The New School, School of Visual Arts, Massachusetts College of Art, Sarah Lawrence College and New York University Steinhardt School of Art.
Richard Ford has been named the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing. Ford's novel Independence Day (1995) was the first book to receive both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Sportswriter (1986), Women with Men (1998) and most recently, Canada (2012). He comes to us from the University of Mississippi.
Heidi Julavits is the author of the novels The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), The Uses of Enchantment (2006) and The Vanishers (2012). Her work has appeared in Harper's, New York Magazine, McSweeney's, Zoetrope, Esquire, Vogue, New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review and Time. She is arecipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and co-founder and co-editor of The Believer, a three-time National Magazine Award finalist, now in its ninth year of production.
Rob King comes to the Film Program after five years at the University of Toronto, where he won the Dean's Excellence Award in 2010. He held previous positions at UCLA and UCSD. King is the co-editor of the books Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Practices of Early Cinema and The Slapstick Symposium: Essays on Silent Comedy, and author of the book The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (2009).
Keith Mayerson received his BFA from Brown University and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Mayerson and writer Dennis Cooper co-authored the graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged. His art and writing have appeared in several magazines such as Interview, BOMB and ArtUS. Mayerson has been an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, New York University and University of California, Irvine, and has been a member of the full-time faculty at School of Visual Arts since 2000.
Michael Passaro has been an Actors Equity Association Stage Manager for over twenty years. He has worked extensively on Broadway productions including Evita, Phantom of the Opera, The History Boys, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Cabaret, Carousel and Angels in America, among others. From 2009-2011 he was a Lecturer in Stage Management at the Yale School of Drama. He is a two-time graduate of New York University, earning a BFA in Theatre from the Tisch School of the Arts, and an MA in Arts Management from the Gallatin School.
