Amy Borden

Amy Borden is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Film Studies at Portland State University's University Honors College. She previously served as Director of the School of Film (2020-2021) and was a founding faculty member of the School of Film from 2017-2022. Prior to this, she was tenured in the PSU School of Theater and Film (2012-2017) and completed a Mellon/ACM Fellowship as a Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Olaf College (2010-2012).

• PhD in Cultural and Critical Studies, University of Pittsburgh
• MA in Communications, Film, University of Iowa
• BA in English & Media Studies, Carleton College

Borden specializes in silent film history and classical film theory, with particular expertise in how American publications framed early motion pictures. Her research examines theorizations of consciousness in gilded-age magazines, the relationship between shadow imagery and early cinema, and the representation of immigration in silent film cycles. She has written extensively about Hugo Münsterberg, Mary Pickford, and the 'sausage machine' film cycle. Her work demonstrates how early film was contextualized within broader visual culture through periodical publications.

Analysis of Borden's publications reveals consistent engagement with the materiality of film technology, embodiment in spectatorship, and the intermedial contexts of early cinema. Her work bridges historical film studies with contemporary theoretical concerns, particularly regarding gender, ethnicity, and the politics of visual representation. Recent publications focus on photochemical motion pictures in periodicals and the cultural significance of shadow imagery.

Borden has presented at major conferences including SCMS and Domitor. Her work has appeared in prominent journals such as Screen Bodies, Jump Cut, and Media History, as well as in anthologies including The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender and Multiplicities: Cycles, Sequels, Remakes and Reboots in Film & Television.

She teaches seminars on aesthetic philosophy, film and fascism, modernity and the flaneur/euse, and American avant-garde filmmakers including Maya Deren, Barbara Hammer, and Stan Brakhage. Currently, she is researching theorizations of consciousness in gilded-age magazines and developing a book project on silent film cycles and American nativism.