Overview
Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard is an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Chair in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.
Dr. Sheppard was the inaugural Mary Armstrong Meduski '80 Assistant Professor from 2017-2021. She was the recipient of the 2021 Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, which recognizes faculty excellence in Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences. From 2017-2022, Dr. Sheppard was the Faculty Director of Cornell's Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program.
She received her BA in Film & Television Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Dartmouth College and her MA and PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds a graduate certificate in Women's Studies from UCLA's Department of Gender Studies.
Dr. Sheppard's research interests include Black cultural production and production cultures, African American representation in cinema, television studies, sports films, feminist media studies, embodiment studies, and critical race theory. She writes extensively on issues of race, gender, and representation in film, television, and digital media. She teaches courses on global cinema, sports films, contemporary television, African American film history, popular culture, women filmmakers, and blackness on screen.
She is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press, 2020). She is co-editor of the anthologies From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) with TreaAndrea Russworm and Karen Bowdre and Sporting Realities: Critical Readings on the Sports Documentary (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) with Travis Vogan.
She has published essays in Feminist Media Histories, Film Quarterly, The Velvet Light Trap, Cinema Journal, Journal of Sport History, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Black Camera: An International Journal, and FLOW: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture alongside chapters in the anthologies L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (University of California Press, 2015) and Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Indiana University Press, 2018). She has also written for The Atlantic, Flash Art International, Docalogue, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Nike.
In 2022, she was commissioned to write an essay, "Deep Cuts," for Tiona Nekkia McClodden's exhibition "The Trace of an Implied Presence," a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring contemporary Black dance organized by Tiona Nekkia McClodden and co-produced by Nike and The Shed.
Her most recent publication, "A Profound Edge: Collectivism and the New Negress Film Society," can be found in the Fall 2023 edition of Film Quarterly. She is currently writing two essays: one for a book on women's sportswear and another on the television series The Torkelsons.
She is currently working on two book projects and one edited collection. The first, The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History, is in progress and under contract with Rutgers University Press as a part of the "Screening Sports" series. The second book is tentatively titled A Black W/hole: Phantom Cinemas and the Reimagining of Black Women's Media Histories, a project for which she was named a 2021 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Alongside Dr. Alix Beeston and Dr. Hayley O'Malley, Dr. Sheppard is working on an edited collection, Women, Sisters, Friends: The Selected Plays and Screenplays of Kathleen Collins.
She has been quoted in a range of popular press (The New York Times, Vox, BBC News, The Washington Post, Business Insider, NBC News, Miami News Press, and LA Weekly) and featured on film, television, and several podcasts, including appearing as a special guest for Turner Classic Movie's Black History Month programming and Sunday Silent Nights alongside TCM host Jacqueline Stewart.
To learn more about Dr. Sheppard, see her website: http://samanthansheppard.com
In the news
- PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in “Casting the Cabinet” Article from the NYT
- PMA 1611: PMA Studios Info Sessions
- Call for Scripts: PMA Studios
- PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard to Introduce Program at Carnegie Museum of Art
- Tony Award winner Daveed Diggs to visit campus for talk
- PMA Presents: An Evening with Daveed Diggs, 2024 Heermans-McCalmon Distinguished Guest Artist
- PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Joins Faculty Advancement Network as Leadership Fellow
- What a Harris candidacy means: Cornell experts weigh in.
- Groundswell of Black women celebrity activism expected for Harris
- PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in NYT Article About Sean Combs
- PMA Department Chair Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in NYT Article
- Dance Town Hall
- PMA Associate Professor Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in Article about The Color Purple
- Professor Sheppard Featured in Amazon Prime Documentary
- PMA Podcast Episode 48: Desdemona by Toni Morrison
- ‘The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere’ A Book Talk by Dr. Courtney Brannon Donoghue
- Associate Professor Samantha N. Sheppard Delivers a Keynote Address at the University of Iowa for the Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium
- New Publication by Associate Professor Samantha N. Sheppard Featured in Film Quarterly
- Film series: Voices & Visions in Black Media: Centering New Directions in Nollywood
- PMA Associate Professor Samantha Noelle Sheppard Quoted in BBC News Article
- Professor Samantha N. Sheppard on NBC News
- PMA Professors Kristen Warner and Samantha N. Sheppard awarded the 2023 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Distinguished Service Award
- PMA Professor Samantha N. Sheppard was recently featured on The Film Comment Podcast.
- Black sports history topic of Cornell Seymour Lecture
- PMA professor named Academy Film Scholar
- Advising, teaching awards honor Arts and Sciences faculty
- Senior Mellon Mays fellows reflect on their program experiences
- ‘Sporting Blackness’ examines race and representation in film
- The Films That Understand Why People Riot
- Merrill Scholars near and far honor their teachers, mentors
- Samantha Sheppard chosen as Woodrow Wilson Fellow
- Philosophy professor to address ‘White Backlash’ in Mellon Mays talk
- The documentary that bucks Oscar trends—and still got a nomination
- Give and Go: The double movement of "Shut Up and Dribble"
- Mellon Mays fellows score grad school admissions
- Nine faculty projects win Internationalizing the Curriculum grants
- Gifts create new Arts & Sciences professorships
- Scholars, artists convene to discuss black girls, women
- Faculty critique documentary 'I Am Not Your Negro'
- 'Skin,' LGBT festival highlight Cornell Cinema spring events
PMA Courses - Fall 2024
- PMA 3000 : Independent Study
- PMA 3463 : Contemporary Television
- PMA 7000 : Independent Study for Graduate Students in Performing and Media Arts