Biography
Roderick Coover holds a BA from Cornell University (1989), an MA from Brown University (1994) and a PhD in the history of culture, with a specialization in media arts and anthropology, from the University of Chicago (1999). His films and new-media works include Unknown Territories (2011), Vérité to Virtual (DER, 2008), The Theory of Time Here (Video Data Bank, 2007), and Cultures in Webs (Eastgate, 2003), among others. His scholarship has been published in journals such as Film Quarterly, Visual Studies, and Visual Anthropology and in books such as the SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. As co-editor of the recently published Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts (University of Chicago Press), Professor Coover examines the impact of new technologies in the humanities and arts. He has presented plenary and keynote addresses at conferences in North America, South America and Europe, and his visual works have been exhibited internationally at venues such as Documenta Madrid and SIGGRAPH. Professor Coover is on executive and editorial boards with the International Visual Sociology Association, the Electronic Literature Organization, Visual Studies and E-Media, and his awards include a United States Information Agency Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, a Chicago Group on Modern France Fellowship, and an LEF Foundation grant. Professor Coover teaches a wide range of courses that integrate production and theory with an emphasis on cross-cultural and experimental production methods. These include courses in international cinema, interactive media arts, anthropological film, documentary arts, visual research and experimental methods from film to digital media. His courses, which combine critique, screenings, group and individual project work, and readings from across the disciplines, challenge students to test issues of film and media theory through original and innovative productions.