Roderick Coover

Pic of Rod Coover

Roderick Coover

  • School of Theater, Film and Media Arts

    • Film and Media Arts

      • Professor, Director of DAER and DAVR programs, Co-Director of MA program

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. 

Recent Research

  • The publication of a large interactive work in the nation’s leading collection of multimedia literature. “Voyage into the Unknown.” In Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2, edited by Laura Borràs et al. College Park, M.D.: Electronic Literature Organization, 2010.
  • Exhibition of the works Currency (Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, Penna., in November 2011)Something That Happened Only Once, Outside/Inside, Unknown Territories, Rats and Cats, and The Last Volcano, among others.
  • The publication of a co-edited book with University of Chicago Press: Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
  • In 2010, he received an award as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Bergen, Norway.