Joel Burges

Joel Burges is an Associate Professor of English and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, with affiliations in Film and Media Studies and Digital Media Studies. His research bridges media studies, cultural theory, and digital humanities, focusing on labor, temporality, and audiovisual histories. He leads the Mediate project, a digital annotation platform used in academic and cultural institutions.

Key research areas include television production as labor and aesthetics, horror cinema as cultural mode, and digital annotation for analyzing race, gender, and sexuality. His books include Out of Sync & Out of Work (2018) and edited volumes like Time: A Vocabulary of the Present (2016). Recent work explores close-ups in film via Mellon grants and collaborates with Kinolab and the Visual Studies Workshop.

• Teaching Awards: Edward Peck Curtis Award (2022), Judith Kerman Award (2022)
• Grants: Mellon Foundation, ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant, SSHRC Connection Grant
• Projects: Mediate, Digital History of the Close-Up, Rochester Digital Annotation Project

His pedagogy spans graduate seminars on media theory and undergraduate courses on film history, TV poetics, and time studies. Collaborations include cross-institutional projects like Embodying the Video Essay and partnerships with the Nomadic Archivists Project.