My research is dedicated to the theorization of cross-cultural spectatorship in popular culture, with particular attention to the effects of visual technologies ranging from stereoscopes and film to virtual reality. I am currently working on a manuscript entitled "Public Places, Private Journeys: Technology and the Mobilized Gaze of the Tourist." Some of my articles include:
- "Virtual VR," Convergence.
- "Snapshots of Greece: Never On Sunday and the East/West Politics of the Greek Vacation Film,¹" Journal of Film and Video.
- "Stereoscopic Visions: Touring the Panama Canal," Visual Anthropology Review.
- "Exotic Bodies, Distant Landscapes: Touristic Viewing and Popularized Anthropology in the Nineteenth Century," Wide Angle.
- "E. M. Forster's Anti-Touristic Tourism and the Sight-Seeing Gaze of Cinema," in Cinema and the Postmodern.
- "Narrativizing Cyber-Travel: CD-ROM Travel Games and the Art of Historical Recovery," in Hop on Pop: the Pleasures and Politics of Popular Culture.
- "Hyphenated Anthropologists,Tourist Stand-ins, and the Logic of the Repeat Journey," Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics.
- "Moving Postcards: The Politics of Mobility and Stasis in Early Touristic Entertainments," in Tourism and Culture: Image, Identity and Marketing.
Within the Information Design and Technology Program, I teach multimedia design and video production, while at the undergraduate level, I teach primarily film classes. I am also a faculty member of Georgia Tech's Center for NewMedia Education and Research where I teach courses on Macromedia Director and Flash. I am also a member of the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center.
In addition to my research and teaching, I was one of the organizers of the 1999 Digital Arts and Culture Conference and Videopticon, a local video festival. Additionally, Greg VanHoosier-Carey and I are working on an NEH-funded CDrom project which explores D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation against the background of Southern culture and racial politics. The project, entitled Griffith in Context, utilizes scholarly voiceovers, editing exercises, and an annotated filmstrip to facilitate close analysis of film clips at the level of both the shot and the individual frame. Another CDrom I was involved with, Silent Screen: The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor also ties together multimedia and silent film history. I am also co-moderator of LCC's WIPS (Works-in-Progress) Seminar.