Faculty Profiles

Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at Texas State University. Prior to her arrival at Texas State, she held a Mellon grant-funded postdoctoral fellowship in digital humanities at the University of Texas where she received her PhD in 2022.

My research examines the nexus of contemporary cinema, new media, and literature, particularly poetry and theories of the lyric. My current book project examines poetry-savvy narrative films, many of which also foreground new media forms, in the twenty-first century. The project contributes to discussions of intermediality, the lyric's ongoing adaptability and survival, and new approaches to theorizing formalism in film and literature.

I am also interested in digital humanities projects that increase public access to archival holdings and contextualize media artifacts.

My pedagogy considers film, with its combination of visual and audio forms, to be a superlative medium for teaching students close-reading. My courses emphasize student-led inquiry into a broad selection of film history from silent films to contemporary documentaries.