Karen Beckman - Director
Office: 209A Fisher-Bennett Hall & 209 Jaffe
Telephone: Jaffe: 215.898.3250; Fischer-Bennett Hall: 215.746.3761
Profile: Karen Beckman is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Associate Professor of Film Studies in the department of the History of Art, and she is also the director of the program in Cinema Studies. She completed her BA in English at Cambridge University and her Ph.D in English at Princeton University. Her book, Vanishing Women: Magic, Film and Feminism (Duke UP, 2003), examines the relationship between the elusive female body and the medium of film. She is currently completing a book about car crashes and film that includes chapters on early cinema, slapstick comedy, educational safety films, Warhol, and contemporary disaster films (forthcoming, Duke UP). She is co-editor of two volumes: Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography with Jean Ma (Duke UP, September 2008) and Picture This! Photography and Literature with Liliane Weissberg. She has published articles on a range of subjects, including feminism and terrorism, death penalty photography, pop art and literature, and the relationship between cinema and contemporary art. She is also one of the senior editors of the journal Grey Room. Courses taught include: Introduction to Film Theory (CINE 103), Film Theory (ARTH 593), Cinema and Photography (ARTH 793; CINE 392), Race, Sex and Gender in Early Cinema (ARTH 793), Women and Film (CINE 208), FIlm History (CINE 101), The Road Movie (ARTH 291), and Issues in Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating. She is a member of graduate groups in the departments of German and English, and is an affiliated faculty member of Women's Studies, the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the LGBT center.
Office hours (Fall 2007, 209A FBH): Tuesday 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm and by appointment.

Nicola M. Gentili - Associate Director
Office: Fisher-Bennett Hall 209A
Telephone: 215.898.8782
Profile: Nicola M. Gentili graduated in Jurisprudence from "La Sapienza" University of Rome in 1985. As a lawyer, he worked for an International Law Firm in Rome specializing himself in all matters of Italian Civil Law. At the same time, he worked regularly as a film critic for several Italian Cinema publications. Arriving to the United States in February 1992, he was appointed adjunct professor in Italian at Temple University and Drexel University. Since January 1994, he has been a Lecturer in Italian for the University of Pennsylvania where he established Business Italian courses. He is currently the Associate Director of the Cinema Studies Program and the Director of the Penn-in-Cannes summer program in France. Mostly recently, he has been appointed pre-major advisor in the College of Arts and Sciences and he joined Harrison College House in 2007 as a Senior Fellow.
Office hours: Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in 209A FBH.