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Ivy Roberts

Cinema studies professor

Education

  • P.H.D., media, art, and text, Virginia Commonwealth University
  • M.L.I.S., library and information science, University of Maryland
  • M.A., film studies & Culture, Antioch University
  • B.A., film/video studies/cultural history, Marlboro College

Credentials

Teaching experience

  • Professor of cinema studies, 2024–present, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
  • Adjunct instructor, film studies, 2023–24, Montgomery College
  • Adjunct instructor, interdisciplinary studies, 2018–24, Southern New Hampshire University
  • Adjunct professor, digital media and web technology, 2017–24, University of Maryland University College
  • Adjunct instructor, English, 2013–20, Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Teaching fellow, film, 2019, John Tyler Community College
  • Adjunct instructor, media literacy, 2011–12, Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College
  • Adjunct instructor, computer and media technology, 2011, Community College of Vermont, Brattleboro

Awards, recognitions, and honors

  • Honorable Mention, Popular Culture Association, for Futures of the Past: An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Critical Essays, McFarland Press, 2021
  • Chancellor's Teaching Fellowship, John Tyler Community College, 2019
  • Phi Kappa Phi National Honors Society, VCU, 2016–17

Organizations

  • Area chair – visual culture, Popular Culture Association
  • South Atlantic Modern Language Association
  • American Library Association

Publications and presentations

Articles

  • "Gernsback's Challenge: Pseudoscience, Science Fiction, and Perpetual Motion." Apocryphal Technologies (Forthcoming, 2024).
  • "Superpsychos in the Asylum: Superheroes through the lens of Mad Studies." Collecting Thoughts (Forthcoming 2023).
  • "Artificial Horizon: Blind Flight in the History of Virtual Reality." International Journal of Stereo and Immersive Media 6(1) (Dec 2022).
  • "Wonderland and the Wasteland: The Colorfully Dirty Mise en Scene in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." In A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam, edited by Ian Bekker, Sabine Planka, and Philip Van Der Merwe. Lexington Books (2022).
  • "Who do you think is powering that spotlight?": Social mobility and resistance in Black Mirror's 'Fifteen Million Merits.' Vector (Feb 2022).
  • "The Dirty Industrial Rivalry That Determined Whether America's Electricity Would be AC or DC." Zocalo Public Square (June 2019).
  • "'Edison's Telephonoscope': The Visual Telephone and the Satire of Electric Light Mania," Early Popular Visual Culture 15.1 (February 2017), 1–25.

Books

  • Artificial Horizon: A Media Archaeology of Virtual Reality, Peter Lang, forthcoming in 2027.
  • Visions of Electric Media in the Victorian and Machine Ages, Amsterdam University Press, 2019.

Edited books

  • Futures of the Past: An Anthology of Science Fiction Stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with Critical Essays, McFarland Press, 2020.

Conference presentations

  • "The Techno-Stereoscopic View: View Master and Visual culture on the brink." Popular Culture Association. New Orleans, LA, April 17–19, 2025
  • "'This House is Full of Strange Things': VIsualizing the Seen and Unseen in David Lowery's The Green Knight." South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Jacksonville, FL, November 15–17, 2024.
  • "Superpsychos: Psychotic Superheroes through the lens of Madness Studies." Popular Culture Association, San Antonio, TX, April 5–8, 2023.
  • "'White Guys Are Not on Trend': Race and Shapeshifting in Neil Gaiman's American Gods." Popular Culture Association, Seattle, WA, April 13–26, 2022.
  • "The Persistence of Noise: Analog Screens in the Digital TV Era." MLA, Toronto, ON, January 7–10, 2021.
  • "Using Science Fiction in the Interdisciplinary Classroom." Berglund Seminar Series, VCU Honors College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, September 14, 2020
  • "Tinker Culture: Practicing the Craft of Radiovision in 1920s America." Media in Transition 10: "Democracy and Digital Media." Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, May 17–18, 2019.
  • "Spell-casting as Illusion-Dance: The Look and Laws of Physical Magic in The Magicians." Escape Velocity/Museum of Science Fiction: "Do You Believe in Magic." National Harbor, MD, May 25–27, 2018.
  • "Thomas Edison's Hypnotic Machine: Technology, Science Fiction, and Progress." South Atlantic Modern Language Association: "High Art/Low Art: Borders and Boundaries in Popular Culture." Atlanta, GA, November 3–5, 2017.
  • "Image–Sounds and Sound Pictures: Innovation and Standardization in Late 1920s Film and Television." Film & History Conference: "Journeys, Detours, Breakdowns," University of Wisconsin – Madison, November 4–8, 2015.
  • "'Printing by Lightning': Ambiguities of Presence and the Victorian Copying Telegraph." Virginia Humanities Conference: "The Humanities and Its Bodies," Longwood University, Farmville, VA, March 21–22, 2014.