Visual Arts Assistant Professor of Teaching, Film and Media Studies

Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego invites applications for an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Film and Media Studies. The Assistant Professor of Teaching will teach in the quickly growing interdisciplinary Cinematic Arts major and will collaborate with The Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts. This center promotes research, scholarship, teaching, production and exhibition of film, providing access and opportunity for UC San Diego students and scholars to pursue instruction in cinematic arts.

We seek a candidate who is working across a range of potential research areas, including film and media history, theory, aesthetics, and curation. The ideal candidate will bring a rigorous approach to foundational film studies while engaging adjacent fields like time-based media, experimental and expanded cinema. This candidate will provide a crucial role in performing the pedagogical mission of the Cinematic Arts major.

Duties include classroom teaching at all levels, graduate supervision, active research, and departmental and university service. The successful candidate will teach in the Department of Visual Arts undergraduate Media major, an area spanning analog and digital photography, film, digital media, and the history, theory, and criticism of film and media. The position also entatls teaching in the M.F.A. program and contributing to the Ph.D. programs in Art History, Theory, and Criticism and Art Practice.

We seek candidates whose research, teaching, and service records demonstrate their capacity to contribute to culturally responsive pedagogy, engaging with students from all social backgrounds. Our ideal candidate will demonstrate a commitment to inclusive teaching of non-traditional, global, or marginalized cinematic perspectives.

Teaching will encompass the entire curricular range, from large undergraduate lecture courses to graduate courses for MFA and Ph.D. Art Practice students. Courses could include such topics as Histories of World Cinema, Second Cinema, Third Cinema, the Avant-garde in Cinema, Documentary Film History, Media Art Histories and the Aesthetics of Cinematic arts.

All department faculty are expected to advise, work with, and serve on the committees of, MFA students in all areas and also work with, and serve on the committees of, Ph.D. students.

The Department of Visual Arts ranks among the world’s leading art schools. Founded on the principle that the production, critical analysis and history of art are inter-related activities. The Department of Visual Arts offers undergraduate degrees in Art History, Studio Art, Media, Speculative Design, and the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major (ICAM), as well as housing internationally renowned graduate programs in studio art (MFA) and art history and art practice (PhD).

As our department grows and moves forward, our current faculty include exciting new internationally renowned artists and scholars working in a range of disciplines in the study and practice of art.

The standard teaching load is 6 courses per year.

The appointment is expected to begin July 1 2027.