The People of the Academy

Tara McPherson is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. She is a core faculty member of the MAP program, USC’s innovative practice based-Ph.D., and also an affiliated faculty member in the American Studies and Ethnicity Department.  Her research engages the cultural dimensions of media, including the intersection of gender, race, affect and place.  She focuses on the digital humanities, early software histories, and various online communities, as well as upon the development of new tools and paradigms for digital publishing, learning, and authorship.  Her most recent book is Feminist in a Software Lab: Difference + Design (Harvard UP: 2018).  Her Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South (Duke UP: 2003) received the 2004 John G. Cawelti Award for the outstanding book published on American Culture, among other awards.  She is co-editor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Duke UP: 2003) and Transmedia Frictions; The Arts, the Humanities, and the Digital (California UP: 2015) and editor of Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected, part of the MacArthur Foundation series on Digital Media and Learning (MIT Press, 2008.)   She is the Founding Editor of Vectors, www.vectorsjournal.org, a multimedia peer-reviewed journal and was a founding editor of the MacArthur-supported International Journal of Learning and Media.  Tara was among the founding organizers of Race in Digital Space, a multi-year project supported by the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. She has been a fellow at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and participates on numerous boards, film juries, and task forces. With major support from the Mellon Foundation and the NEH, she was the Lead PI on the development of the online authoring platform, Scalar, now situated within the Ahmanson Lab.

Karin Huebner received her Ph.D. in history from USC in 2009, her M.A. in history from USC, and her B.A. in history from UCLA.  She received the W. Turrentine Jackson Prize from the Pacific Historical Review for the best essay submitted by a graduate student for her article, “An Unexpected Alliance: Stella Atwood, the California Clubwomen, John Collier, and the Indians of the Southwest, 1917-1934,” which appeared in the PHR August 2009 issue.  As a graduate student, she received the USC University Excellence in Teaching Award in 2005.  In 2012, she received the USC Remarkable Woman Award, 2012, a campus-wide recognition for achievements in scholarship, contributions to USC, commitment to students and women’s issues, community involvement, and professional excellence.  Prior to Dr. Huebner’s career as a historian, she competed on the Women’s World Tennis Tour.  She also captained the UCLA women’s tennis team to its first national championship in 1981.

Curtis Fletcher's research draws on key questions in the fields of media studies, visual studies, science and technology studies, and the history of technology. His published works examine the history of educational technology, the history of humanities education, and the history of the digital humanities. His work in the digital humanities focuses on multimedia and multimodal authoring and publishing, digital pedagogy, and critical making. He specializes in digital research and writing, with particular expertise in new models for authoring, credentialing, and publishing born-digital humanities scholarship. He is a Co-PI on the multimedia authoring platform, Scalar, and for the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture.

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, literary scholar and critic, the Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature, film critic and cultural historian, University Professor Leo Braudy is a polymath’s polymath. His areas of expertise are an intersection of multiple disciplines and he has written authoritatively on a wide variety of subjects.

Dr. Robin Romans serves as Associate Provost at the University of Southern California. On behalf of the Provost, he oversees the USC Arts and Humanities Initiative; administers all processes related to the university’s accreditation through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC); and, manages USC’s strategic planning process. Romans also serves as the Provost’s liaison to USC Arts, a collaboration of USC’s five arts deans (Architecture, Cinematic Arts, Fine Arts, Music, and Theatre), and to the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, for which he wrote the original proposal in 2009. He also directs the Progressive Degree Program, which allows students to earn a master’s degree in as little as one year beyond the bachelor’s degree, and provides support for the Renaissance, Global, and Discovery Scholars programs, which promote excellence in interdisciplinary studies, global studies, and undergraduate research.



Before moving to the Provost's Office, Romans directed USC's prestigious Thematic Option Honors Program, and served as Assistant Dean of Admission and Honors Programs in the Dornsife College. There he developed undergraduate research opportunities, new honors programs, and was charged with restructuring the Office of College Admission. He represented Dornsife at all major in-state and out-of-state recruitment events.



Romans earned his doctorate at USC. He teaches undergraduate courses in Political Science, Gender Studies, and General Education, including Ideology and Political Conflict; Sex, Power, and Politics; American Political Thought; and, Body Issues. His teaching interests include classical political thought, Enlightenment thought, Liberalism, Marxism, feminism, and contemporary political thought. He also serves as President of USC's Epsilon Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

A philosopher, literary scholar, and historian, Professor Ed McCann’s research interests center in the history of modern philosophy, especially Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Newton, Kant, and the great early 20th century polymath Ludwig Wittgenstein. One example of his innovative approach to philosophical and historical inquiry, Professor McCann guides his students to view trials as crucial indicators of society coming to terms with threatening concepts and their implications. Professor McCann is a treasure-trove of knowledge who patiently walks students through not only the complex historical conditions, but also the intellectual climate of each era.