Associate Professors

Katherine Fry	Barbara Lewis	Adrian Meppen	Irene Sosa

Frederick Wasser	John Jannone	Irina Patkanian

Katherine G. Fry

Associate Professor, Deputy Chair, Graduate Division

Ph.D., Temple University, 1994.

Current research and publications in media and cultural geography,
media criticism, and media ecology.  Specializations include mass media and
society, television news, critical cultural studies, advertising.

Recent research includes a book, Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster, Hampton Press, 2003.  Other publications include: "Television News: Hero for New Orleans, Hero for the Nation" in Space and Culture: International Journal of Social Spaces; an article on natural disaster news and popular culture in Explorations in Media Ecology;  "Starbucks Coffee:  Promoting and Selling the Postmodern Brew,"in Critical Studies in Media Commercialism, Oxford University Press;  "A Cultural Geography of Lake Wobegon" in the Howard Journal of Communication; and various other critical articles on magazines and German television. Fry is co-director of the Department's Advertising and Culture Archives.  Formerly she was a frequent guest and commentatoron "World:Comm".

Classes for Spring 2010:

TVR 701 Introduction to Media Studies, Tuesday 6:30pm-9:15pm
TVR 769X Fieldwork in Electronic Media
TVR 785.2G Thesis Development
TVR 796 Special Problems

Office Hours for Spring 2010:

Mon: 11:00am - 12:00pm
Tues: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Wed: 11:00am - 12:00pm,

Office: 303b A
Phone: 718-951-5600 ext. 2791
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

Email: katfry@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Adrian Meppen

Associate Professor

M.S., Columbia University, 1963.

News Producer, Editor and Writer, WCBS-TV, New York. News Editor, The New York Times. Reporter, The Wall Street Journal and Newsday. Author of a broadcast news text published by Macmillan. Vice President, Writers Guild of America, East. Professor Meppen is the Coordinator of the Broadcast Journalism program in the department of Television and Radio.

Please note that Professor Meppen is currently on medical leave.

Office Hours for Spring 2010:

Please contact Professor directly for specific appointment.
Phone: 718-951-5555 (Brooklyn College) / 908-309-5376 (CELL) rofessor directly. Phext.2789

andy411@mac.com

Irene Sosa

Associate Professor

Fulbright Scholar teaching and research in Venezuela, Spring 2005
MFA Film and Television, Tisch School of the Arts at New York University Licenciatura in Mass Communication, Universidad Central de Venezuela

Video maker Irene Sosa has just finished “Sueño Paria” a 15-minute documentary about an ecological tourism project in Venezuela and his promoter Wilfred Merle. Two of her documentaries will soon be out on a DVD as part of a Kartemquin project on the work of artists Nancy Spero and Leon Golub. The Chicago based company produced such documentaries as Hoop Dreams and The New Americans. Sosa and her work are also included in a doctoral dissertation, The Art of Rupture Émigré Artists in Contemporary Perspective by Elizabeth Bachner

She is currently working on her documentary "Shopping to Belong," about the relationship between shopping, the sense of belonging and citizenship in the Latino community, as well as in a series of short experimental videos dealing with the mass media and war. She is also working on a project begun in 2005 on the Venezuelan art critic Margarita D’Amico.

In 2003 she was commissioned to make a retrospective of her work on Nancy Spero (13 documentaries) Including “Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers Nancy Spero in the NYC Subway” 11 min documentary, 2003, "Woman As Protagonist: The Art of Nancy Spero." 45 min. documentary, 1993 : Her short video documentaries on the artist include: "To Soar II," "Minerva," "Sky Goddess," "Madrid," and "Nancy Spero in Derry, Northern Ireland". She also decided to include some work from other sources to produce a four DVD anthology of work on Nancy Spero that was shown at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea in Galicia, Spain that year.

Over the past 5 years she has continued to collaborate with choreographer Merián Soto on several projects: Asi Se Baila Un Son, Prequel, and the Time Machine, multimedia performances that were presented in several venues including, The Joyce Theater and Dance Theater Workshop in NYC.

Since its completion in 1999, Sosa's "Sexual Exiles," a 30 min. documentary about gays and lesbians who left their countries because of their sexual orientation, has been shown in more than 30 national and international venues, and continues to be invited to festivals, exhibitions, and other events.

She collaborated as a filmmaker in "Historias" and "Familias," two multimedia dance performance directed by Meriån Soto and Pepón Osorio. She also collaborated with photographer Susan Unterberg on "Close Ties," a photo/video installation presented at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; and with Pepón Osorio in several of his installations. In 1995 she presented her own piece titled "When I Grow Up," a multimedia performance at the "Rompeforma" festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico and at PS122 in New York City.

In 1998 she was a recipient of the Individual Artist's Fellowship in video from the New York Foundation for the Arts; a fellowship from The Andrea Frank Foundation; and in 1995 she received an Individual Artist grant from the New York State Council for the Arts. She has received five PSC-CUNY Research Awards.

In 2003 Sosa was given a Brooklyn College Creative Achievement Award.

In 2004-2005 Sosa was granted a Fulbright fellowship.

Classes for Spring 2010:

TVR 20 Sight/Sound/Motion: Basic Production Theories and Techniques, Wed. 11:00am-1:45pm
TVR 27.1 Elements of Television Field Production, Monday 2:15pm-6:25pm
TVR 785.4G Thesis Development

Office Hours for Spring 2010:

Mon: 12:30pm - 1:45pm
Wed: 10:00am - 10:45am, 2pm - 3pm

Office: 407s A
Phone: 718-951-5600 ext. 2796
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

isosa@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Frederick Wasser

Associate Professor

Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1996.

Veni, Vidi, Video; Awarded The Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology in 2003
The Hollywood Empire and the VCR (Austin TX: University of Texas Press)

Professor Wasser's academic scholarship is inspired by the communications question of the relationships between mass culture and its audiences, particularly in the film industry. This has come out of his experience in Hollywood where the greatest energy is in putting together the resources to make a film, rather than actually making a film. It is the distributor, he says, who indirectly puts together these resources, by matching the audience to the film. Therefore the distributor is key to understanding the relationship between the film and its audience. Wasser has written on film distribution, its grassroots possibilities, trans-national distribution and distribution of films in various media.Professor Wasser's interests include history and communications, political economy of communication, media ecology, film and television, aural media, new media, study of culture, mass media and social theory, copyright and the arts, Scandinavian literature, Norwegian medieval architecture, and theater.Professor Wasser has extensive practical experience in the film and television industries, in all phases of production. He edited the last "biker" film made in Hollywood, Hellriders (1986) starring TV's Adam West ("Batman") and Tina Louise ("Gilligan's Island), and his sound editor credits include Nightmare on Elm Street IV (1988) where he put the click in Freddy Kruger's razor fingers, and Missing in Action (1984), for which he created the "yummy chewing sounds" of Chuck Norris eating a rat. Wasser has also worked in a New York City fashion advertising firm, as a freelance magazine reporter, and as a film reviewer in print and on radio. More offbeat assignments include a tour as a deckhand on a Mississippi oil towbarge.

Professor Wasser has published several book chapters, and articles in Cinema Journal, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journal of Communication, and elsewhere. He is currently contributing columnist to FLOW.  
His columns are available at http://idg.communication.utexas.edu/flow/
His online article entitled "Media is Driving Work" is available in the   Journal of Media and Culture 4(5) (2001) online at http://www.media-culture.org.au/

Please note that Professor Wasser is on a Fellowship leave till Spring 2011

Office hours:
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

fwasser@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Barbara Jo Lewis

Associate Professor,
Department of Television and Radio and Department of Economics

Ph.D., New York University, Culture and Communication, 1997.
MFA, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, 1977.
BA, Washington University, 1973

Current research and publications extend doctoral studies in culture and communication and include the following articles: "Children of the Mechanical Bride: Additional Abstractions of Human Stereotypes" in the proceedings for "The Legacy of McLuhan: A Symposium" sponsored by Fordham University; "Cyborg Consciousness: Conceptions of Human Identity in a Technological World" in the Proceedings of the 55th Annual conference of the New York State Communication Association; and "Hello Dolly: Media Coverage of Cloning Events and the Popular Imagination" to be presented at the National Communication Association conference.

For more than a decade, has been an advertising agency producer employed by a number of large agencies including Wells Rich Greene, DMB&B, and Ketchum. Awards include AFI for MFA thesis film, "Larissa," post-production recognition on Emmy award-winning documentary "Countdown to Collision," and George Ketchum and Chicago Film Festival award for "Anything Goes."

Taught photography through an Assistantship with George Washington University at Airlie Productions/Raven's Hollow, Ltd.

See also: Professor Lewis' page at the Department of Economics, which includes a complete list of conferences and publications.

Classes for Spring 2010:

TVR 17 TV/R Advertising (Same as BUS 50.7) Tuesday 6:30pm-9:15pm
TVR 17 TV/R Advertising (Same as BUS 50.7) Tuesday & Thursday 2:15pm-3:30pm
TVR 17 TV/R Advertising (Same as BUS 50.7) Tuesday & Thursday 3:40pm-4:55pm

Also Business Courses. Please see schedule of classes for BUS courses.

Office Hours for Spring 2010:

Tues: 12:15pm - 2:15pm, 5:00pm-6:15pm

Office: 407s A
Phone: 718-951-5600 ext. 2788
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

barbaraj@brooklyn.cuny.edu

John Jannone

Associate Professor, CUNY Director,
Program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts

MFA (Electronic Arts), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1993
BA Cum Laude, Honors (Philosophy), Colgate University, 1991

John J.A. Jannone makes and studies noises, pictures, and stories; and is
particularly interested in noises, pictures, and stories which somehow involve
electricity, numbers, and people. He is an Associate Professor at Brooklyn
College, and designed the College's two graduate programs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA), www.interactivearts.org, which he directed through the spring of 2008.

He is the recipient of numerous grants, including National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation and CreativeIT grants. His current research interest is in cooperation theory and its applicability in the arts. Other interests include robotics, game theory, and multimedia software development. John co-directs two summer camps for children: Camp Ballibay for the Fine and Performing Arts (www.ballibay.com), and The Farm Arts Camp, (www.thefarmartscamp.com).

Fo information on current projects visit his website at www.johnjajannone.net.

Classes for Spring 2010:

TVR 784G Seminar in Television Program Production II, Thursday 5:00pm-9:00pm

Office Hours for Spring 2010:

Thu: 1:30pm - 3:30pm
Fri: 2:00pm - 3:00 pm

Office: 505s A
Phone: 718-951-5600 ext. 4203
718 951 4203 (office - 376G) (fax 4418)
718 951 5000 x1229 (center for computer music - 250/251G)
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

jannone@mac.com

Irina Patkanian

Associate Professor

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Irina Patkanian came to the U.S. in 1991. After receiving her two graduate degrees from the University of Iowa in 1999, she moved to New York City. She worked at Columbia University's Center for New Media, Pinnacle Systems and Well Spring Film Distribution Company. Her films and videos were shown and won awards at various festivals and museums around the world. She is the president and cofounder of a non-profit film and theater company "In Parentheses" which produces stage and screen adaptations of contemporary literary texts and international documentaries. Irina Patkanian directed/produced documentaries in Russia, France, Egypt, Italy, Greece, Armenia, Mozambique and China. Her documentary "My American Neighbor" about perception of America and the American dream abroad won “best short documentary” award at the Chicago’s “Peace on Earth” film festival, and has been distributed by the "Films for Humanities & Sciences." She is currently working on a documentary feature about Kamchatka, Russia, for which she received the Blaustein Foundation grant. The project was selected to participate in the Below Zero Documentary Forum at the 2010 Trømso International Film Festival, Trømso, Norway. In the summer of 2010 Irina will be traveling to Georgia to work on a documentary about Georgian folk songs, for which she received a grant from Texas State University. She is also working on an animated documentary about Mozambican civil war, for which she received Leonard and Claire Tow faculty travel grant.

In Parenthesis, Inc. (non-for-profit film & theater company)
www.inparenthesis.org

Living Here: A Kamchatka Tale.
www.kamchatkamovie.com

My American Neighbor
www.myamericanneighbor.com

Class Blogs
TVR 20 Class blog: http://inparentheses.org/tvr20
TVR 776 Class blog:  http://inparentheses.org/tvr776

Classes for Spring 2010:

TVR 20 Sight/Sound/Motion: Basic Production Theories & Techniques, Monday 9:30am-12:15pm
TVR 732X Problems in Multiple Camera Television Production, Thursday 9:30am-1:10pm
TVR 776X The Television and Radio Documentary, Thursday 6:30pm-9:15pm

Office hours for Spring 2010:

Monday 12:30pm - 2:00pm
Thursday 5:00pm - 6:30pm

Office: 406s A
Phone: 718-951-5600 ext. 2795
Please contact Professor directly for appointments.

ipatkanian@brooklyn.cuny.edu