Cynthia Chris

Cynthia Chris joined CSI’s Department of Media Culture in 2004. She served as chair for two terms, 2018-24.

Dr. Chris's research interests include media history and regulation, gender and sexuality, and critical animal studies. She is the author of "The Indecent Screen: Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers University Press, 2019) and "Watching Wildlife" (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), and she co-edited "Media Authorship with David Gerstner" (Routledge, 2013) and "Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting" (NYU Press, 2007). Her most recent books, "Cuckoo" (2024) and "Crab" (2021), are contributions to Reaktion's Animal series.

Dr. Chris has contributed to edited volumes including "Animal Satire," "The Craft of Criticism: Critical Media Studies in Practice," "Keywords in Media Studies," "Animal Life and the Moving Image," and "Animals and the Human Imagination," as well as the journals Antennae, Art Journal, Camera Obscura, Communication Review, Television and New Media, and exposure.

She has presented her work at international conferences sponsored by the Center for Twentieth Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, International Communication Association, Society for Cinema & Media Studies, Society for Science and Literature, American Studies Association, and Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television, Video, and Feminism. In 2019, Dr. Chris was a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at Australian National University in Canberra.

At CSI, Dr. Chris has taught undergraduate courses including Theories of Communication, Media Analysis, Media Regulation, Nonfiction Media, Screen Comedy, and History of Radio & Television, as well as, at the graduate level, Media History and Cinema & Gender. Dr. Chris and Dr. Matt Brim of CSI’s Department of English served as general co-editors of the journal WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), published by the Feminist Press at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2014-2016. Dr. Chris is an affiliated faculty member of the Film Studies Certificate Program and the Program in Women's and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.