Lauren S. Berliner

EDUCATION

Ph.D. University of California, San Diego, Communication, expected Spring 2013

M.A. Emerson College, Visual and Media Art, 2005

B.A. Wesleyan University, Cultural Anthropology and English Literature, 1998

I am a scholar and filmmaker working in the area of critical media practice. In my community-based research and teaching I seek to blur distinctions between theory and practice, using collaboration as a way to understand the contemporary use of digital audiovisual technologies in pedagogical and social contexts. My research emerges out of my involvement with teen video producers in two programs that I direct: Girls Empowered to Make Movies (sponsored by The Girl Scouts) and Changing Reels, a media workshop for San Diego LGBT youth. In my dissertation, Making it Better: LGBT Youth and New Pedagogies of Media Production, I examine discourses of youth digital media empowerment in relation to the institutional structures and intersubjective dynamics that are shaping contemporary media production.

Bringing together discussions of ‘digital natives’ discourse, feminist critical pedagogy, and the history of public service communication with critical participatory action research and ethnographic methods, I analyze how adult expectations for youth to produce “empowering” media content may ultimately mask resource needs and homogenize representations of the LGBT youth population. As a practitioner and teacher in the community, it is important to me that my scholarly findings can be utilized towards actionable changes in youth media pedagogy.

My teaching and research interests include:

Critical approaches to digital media and participatory media production
Media pedagogy
Amateur and everyday media production
Documentary film theory and production
Action Research and Ethnographic Methods
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Experimental film and media
Television history and theory

To see my complete CV, please click here

SELECT PUBLICATIONS:

"Shooting for Profit: The Monetary Logic of the YouTube Home Movie" in Saving Private Reels: The Presentation, Appropriation and Re-contextualization of the Amateur Moving Image, eds. Rascaroli, Laura, Barry Monahan and Gwenda Young. Continuum Press (forthcoming)

"Where Your Curriculum Shuts a Door, Open a (YouTube) Window: What Queer Youth Video Bloggers Can Teach Us About Necessary Shifts in Media Pedagogy" in The New Everyday: A Media Commons Project, 2011 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne/cluster/distraction-span-technologies-productive-disruption

"Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Video and Copyright by Lucas Hilderbrand," (Book Review) Popular Communication 8, no.2 (2010) 147-149

http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/42411055/inherent-vice-bootleg-histories-of-videotape-and-copyright-by-lucas-hilderbrand

SELECT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

"It Gets Better? LGBT Teen Filmmakers Identify a Culture of Bullying," Cultural Studies Association, University of California, San Diego, March 2012

"The PSA Paradox: The Affordances and Limitations of Youth-Produced LGBT Anti-bullying Campaigns," Mobility Shifts International Future of Learning Summit, The New School, October 2011

SELECT PROFESSIONAL FILM/CURATORIAL EXPERIENCE:

Co-curator, The Festival of (In)appropriation, Los Angeles FilmForum, 2010-present

http://festivalofinappropriation.org/

Director and Producer, All in One Basket, distributed by Fanlight Productions/Icarus Films, 2005 http://www.fanlight.com/catalog/films/443_aiob.php

COMMUNITY-BASED PRODUCTION WITH YOUTH:

Changing Reels: San Diego’s LGBT Youth Media Workshop: http://www.youtube.com/user/changingreels

Girls Empowered to Make Movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VYV_TQ9cx8&list=PLcgQBJAFMCtcPpKxgAJ6Hr6DO8ll8xaml