Karen Redrobe

Karen Redrobe (formerly Beckman) is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Cinema and Modern Media, Director of the Wolf Humanities Center, and Chair of the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Vanishing Women: Magic, Film and Feminism, Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis, and is now working on a new book, Undead: Animation and the Contemporary Art of War. She has co-edited two volumes: Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography with Jean Ma and On Writing With Photography with Liliane Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences; and is also the editor of Animating Film Theory, which explores the history of film theory’s engagement (and lack of it) with animation. She is now co-editing a new volume with Jeffrey Scheible, entitled Deep Mediations, which explores the intersection of depth as a philosophical and visual concept. As a faculty member, her top priority is to expand access to higher education. 

Her articles address a range of subjects, including the evolving role of film theory in the 21st century, war and the academy, violence and media, community media, animation theory, feminism and terrorism, death penalty photography, the relationship between cinema and contemporary art, and cinematic tempo. For several years she served as a senior editor of the MIT journal Grey Room, and is now a member of its editorial board. She is also a member of the PMLA advisory board.