The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California. For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC also has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and medicine. It is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles, and generates $8 billion in economic impact on Los Angeles and California.
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media & Games Division first accepted M.F.A. students in 2002. The division currently offers both undergraduate (B.A.) and graduate (M.F.A.) programs in interactive media and game design. The programs include courses in game design, development, audio, animation, and user research as well as experimental work in gestural and immersive interfaces, transmedia design, and interactive cinema.
Mariano "Mar" Elepaño is a Filipino American independent filmmaker, teacher, and has been the production supervisor of the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts, USC School of Cinematic Arts since 1993.
The Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts (RSICA) is the first and only MFA program in Cinematic Arts for the Middle East and North Africa. It is based in Aqaba, Jordan. RSICA is a joint effort of Royal Film Commission – Jordan and the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Its students are women and men from the MENA region in a specialized learning environment dedicated to teaching the six key disciplines of the cinematic arts.
Jennifer Warren is an American actress and film director.
Tracy Fullerton is an American game designer, educator and writer. She is a Professor in the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC. In 2014 she was named Director of the USC Games Program, an interdisciplinary collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. From 2010 to 2017, she served as Chair of the USC Interactive Media & Games Division.
Anne Friedberg was Chair of the Critical Studies Division in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and President-elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. An author, historian and theorist of modern media culture, Friedberg received her PhD. in Cinema Studies from NYU. She was on the faculty of Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine, where she was the principal architect for a new interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Visual Studies and the founding director and programmer of UCI's Film and Video Center.
Neil Landau is an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and director. His film and television credits include the teen comedy Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Melrose Place, The Magnificent Seven, Doogie Howser, M.D., The Secret World of Alex Mack and MTV's Undressed.
Kathy Smith is an Australian independent filmmaker, painter, photographer, and Associate Professor with the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts (DADA), USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has been the Chair of DADA since 2004.
Killer Entertainments is a joint venture by Jenny Terry and Raegan Kelly addressing the role of video in the War in Iraq. The project attempts to answer the question of how to present and analyze videos taken by soldiers and marines during combat without diminishing or sensationalizing their contribution. Terry and Kelly's resulting design cultivates the many attributes of the digital medium by making nonlinear connections lacking substantial narrative form. They present multiple viewpoints without focusing on a single argument, thus allowing the user to make their own interpretations.
micha cárdenas is an Assistant Professor of Art & Design: Games and Playable Media at the University of California Santa Cruz. cárdenas is an artist and theorist who works with the algorithms and poetics of trans people of color in digital media.
Marsha Kinder is an American film scholar and Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California.
Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. He is the former President of the Writers Guild of America, West; professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs. He is the son of screenwriter Howard Rodman (1920–1985).
Anne Marie Balsamo is a writer who focuses on the connections between art, culture, gender, and technology.
Jeff Watson is a Canadian game designer, writer, and educator. His principal topics of interest are pervasive and environmental game design, creative process design, and participatory media. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Games at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, associate faculty at the USC Game Innovation Lab, and Director of the Situation Lab.
Kara Keeling is an American humanities academic. As of 2016 she is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in the Critical Studies of Cinematic Arts and in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.
Katherine Anandi Rowe is a scholar of Renaissance literature and media history. She was named the twenty-eighth president of the College of William & Mary on February 20, 2018. She began July 2, 2018 and succeeded W. Taylor Reveley III, who had served as president since 2008. After seven months in office, Rowe was formally inaugurated February 8, 2019 as part of the university’s annual Charter Day ceremony.
Safiya Umoja Noble is an associate professor at UCLA, and is a visiting faculty member to the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication. She is the author of Algorithms of Oppression, and co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture and Emotions, Technology & Design.
