معرفی
Michael B. Gillespie is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He holds a PhD and MA in Cinema Studies from NYU and a BA in English from Morehouse College. His work bridges film studies, black cultural theory, and contemporary visual art.
His research focuses on black visual and expressive culture, film theory, visual historiography, popular music, and contemporary art. In his acclaimed book Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film (Duke University Press, 2016), he redefines black cinema not as a genre or sociological mirror but as a dynamic aesthetic negotiation between race and filmic form. He explores narrative ambiguity, intertextuality, and ambivalence as central to the black cinematic experience.
Gillespie is co-editor (with Lisa Uddin) of Black One Shot, a platform for art criticism featured in ASAP/J. His essays have appeared in Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, The Criterion Collection, liquid blackness, and Ends of Cinema. He served as consulting producer for The Criterion Collection’s releases of Deep Cover and Shaft, contributing scholarly context to landmark films in African American cinema.
He previously held the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Arts and the Black Studies Program at The City College of New York, with affiliations at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He has also taught at Ohio University, Princeton University, The New School, and Duke University, demonstrating a broad academic footprint across institutions with strong commitments to media and cultural studies.
- PhD, Cinema Studies, New York University
- MA, Cinema Studies, New York University
- BA, English, Morehouse College
As a mentor, Gillespie supervises PhD candidates, including Ifeanyi Awachie, whose dissertation examines transnational Nigerian women’s video installations. He is deeply embedded in interdisciplinary networks connecting cinema, black studies, and curatorial practice. Though no specific grants are mentioned, his editorial and production roles indicate active engagement with institutional and public-facing scholarship. He is involved in critical conversations around film preservation, archiving, and the politics of representation, particularly through his association with NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program.
Gillespie is affiliated with the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, a recently renamed unit at Tisch that underscores the department’s prominence in film scholarship and preservation. His office is located at 721 Broadway, Room 641, with office hours for Fall 2025 to be announced.
