School of Film and Media Studies

Associate Professor Paula Halperin returned from a year-long sabbatical in Brazil to become chair of the School of Film and Media Studies in2019.  Halperin has been a member of both the History and Cinema Studies programs, and has contributed to Global Black Studies. Her scholarly work lies at the intersection of visual culture and nationalism in Brazil and Argentina from roughly 1960 to 1980, an era of political instability marked by dictatorships. She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend 2019 for the project, “Dancing Days: Nationalism, Soap Operas, and Dreams of Modernization in Authoritarian Brazil. 1978-1979.”