Title: Portrait of the Academic as a Young Man

Abstract: The firstborn son of a missionary and magician, our protagonist was raised on the edge of the railroad tracks in Buffalo, New York. Under the spell of half-understood existentialist literature and avant-garde art, he left the grain mills of his youth to embark on myriad adventures: college, backpacking across Europe, living in a hut in the desert, grad school, grad school again. He has lived on both coasts and in three continents. Vivid memories include Rome at dawn (a murmuration of starlings, the glowing sky is suddenly black with birds), midnight in Venice (the echo of his own footsteps on empty cobbled streets), and accidentally starting an international incident in Israel (buy him a drink sometime and he'll tell you). Greatest hits include working with former political prisoners in North Ireland, playing CBGBs, producing a human rights documentary for Peter Gabriel's nonprofit, pulling a prank with the Yes Men, and the best is yet to come. Since 2003 he has been a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation is on people who use documentary film for political and social change.

Keywords: Visual Culture, Media for Change, Digital and New Media, Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Methods, Action Research, Visual Persuasion, Art and Society, Documentary and Experimental Film

Partial Bibliography:

Benjamin, Walter
Bey, Hakim
Debord, Guy
de Certeau, Michel
Denzin, Norman
Jenkins, Henry
Lasn, Kalle
Lessig, Lawrence
Macdonald, Dwight
McLuhan, Marshall