Kevin Wynter

Associate Professor of Media Studies; Chair of Media Studies; On leave Spring 2026
kevin.wynter@pomona.edu

United States

United States

With Pomona Since: 2018
Kevin Wynter
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  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Kevin Wynter is a film and media scholar whose research on the history and theory of the moving image is informed by interdisciplinary training in film and media studies, critical theory and continental philosophy. He focuses on body genres and contemporary European art cinema, screen histories of race and representation, psychoanalytic theory and Black popular culture. At the core of his work is a concern with relationality both as a problem reflected in forms of violence on screen, and in a more theoretical and political vein, as an issue of paramount importance in an increasingly networked and technological world.

    Research Interests

    • Body Genres (Horror, Pornography, Melodrama)
    • Critical Race Studies
    • Cinemas of Despair
    • Time
    • Memory
    • Violence

    Areas of Expertise

    MEDIA

    • European Art Cinema
    • American Independent Cinema
    • Horror Genre
    • Digital Gaming
    • Black Popular Culture

    CRITICISM

    • Film Theory
    • Critical Race Theory
    • Psychoanalytic Theory
    • Continental Philosophy
  • Work

    Work

    Books

    Critical Race Theory and Jordan Peele’s Get Out. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2022

    Peer-reviewed Articles

    “When the woman speaks,” Porn Studies, Vol. 11. No. 2 (Fall 2024)

    “The Exorbitant Mirror: Violence, Disavowal, and the Logic of Terror in The White Ribbon,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 61.1 (Fall 2021).

    Book Chapters

    “Introduction to the Continental Horror Film,” Transnational Horror Cinema: Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque. Palgrave-MacMillan, February 2017

    Selected Articles

    “Towards a Theory of Virtual Pornography: A Phenomenological Introduction to Interactive Sex Simulators in the ‘Naïve Realist’ Paradigm,” CineAction, March 2008

    “Excesses of Millennial Capitalism, Excesses of Violence: Several Critical Fragments Regarding the Cinema of Michael Haneke,” CineAction, June 2007

    Public Talks and Interviews

    UMF The New Commons Project Keynote: The Final Brother: On Horror and Black Survivability

    Toyland documentary, interview

    Ideas@Pomona interview with Aditya Sood

    Pomona College Presidential Dialogues: Cultivating Empathy in a Time of Division, panel discussion

    Miscellaneous

    BFI's The Greatest Films of All Time 2022 poll, voter

  • Education

    Education

    Ph.D.
    University of California, Berkeley

    M.A.
    York University

    Hon. B.A.
    University of Toronto

    Recent Courses Taught

    • Screening Violence
    • Film Noir
    • The Cinema of David Lynch
    • The Modern American Horror Film
    • Introduction to Media Studies
    • Film Theory and Aesthetics
  • Awards & Honors

    Awards & Honors

    Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study
    University of California, Berkeley, 2007 – 2012

    UC Dissertation Year Fellowship
    University of California, Berkeley, 2012

    Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship
    University of California, Berkeley, 2010

    Incoming Graduate Scholarship
    York University, 2005

Mailing Address

333 N. College Way
Claremont, CA 91711

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