Jennifer Peterson’s research and teaching focus on the history and aesthetics of U.S. film, with a specialization in silent era cinema and documentary film. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before coming to CU Boulder in fall 2005, she taught at the University of California at Riverside, the University of Southern California, and the California Institute of the Arts. She also worked for three years as an Oral Historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, and briefly in the Home Entertainment division at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Peterson is currently the editor of “Archival News,” a quarterly column issued in conjunction with Cinema Journal, available online at www.cmstudies.org/?page=CJ_Archival_News. She is also the current Chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Media Archives Committee (2009-2011). She has recently served as a commentator on the forthcoming DVD box set Treasures From the American Film Archives V: The American West, to be released fall 2011. Her book, Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film, will be published by Duke University Press.
Peterson regularly teaches Film History I and II, along with courses on Documentary Film, Film Theory, Melodrama, Film Noir, Women and Film, British Cinema, Cinema and Landscape, and Media Historiography.
Selected Publications:
“‘The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures’: Educational Films and Early Cinema Audiences,” in The Blackwell Companion to Early Cinema, 1890-1914, edited by André Gaudreault (Blackwell Publishing, forthcoming 2012).
“Glimpses of Animal Life: Nature Films and the Emergence of Classroom Cinema,” in Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States, ed. Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible (London: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2011).
“The Front Lawn of Heaven: Landscape in Hollywood Melodrama circa 1945,” Camera Obscura 74 (Fall 2010), pp. 118-159.
Articles on Sherlock Jr., Freaks, and Blue Velvet in Fifty Key American Films, ed. Sabine Haenni and John White (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 9-14, pp. 36-41, pp. 198-203.
“‘The Nation’s First Playground’: Travel Films and the American West, 1895-1920,” in Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel, edited by Jeffrey Ruoff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 79-98.
“Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film: Education in the School of Dreams,” in American Cinema’s Transitional Era, edited by Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 191-213.
“The Competing Tunes of Johnny Guitar: Liberalism, Sexuality, Masquerade,” Cinema Journal vol. 35 no. 3 (spring 1996): 3-18. Reprinted in The Western Reader, edited by Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman (New York: Limelight Editions, 1998), pp. 321-339.
Film Studies Program, ATLAS room 329, Film Studies, , Campus Box 316, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0316. ph 303.492.7574 fx 303.492.1362
Jennifer Peterson’s research and teaching focus on the history and aesthetics of U.S. film, with a specialization in silent era cinema and documentary film. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Before coming to CU Boulder in fall 2005, she taught at the University of California at Riverside, the University of Southern California, and the California Institute of the Arts. She also worked for three years as an Oral Historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, and briefly in the Home Entertainment division at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 
“‘The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures’: Educational Films and Early Cinema Audiences,” in The Blackwell Companion to Early Cinema, 1890-1914, edited by André Gaudreault (Blackwell Publishing, forthcoming 2012).