Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard is an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and Interim Chair in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.
Dr. Sheppard was the inaugural Mary Armstrong Meduski ’80 Assistant Professor from 2017 to 2021. She was the recipient of the 2021 Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Humanists and Social Scientists, which recognizes faculty excellence in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. From 2017 to 2022, Dr. Sheppard was the Faculty Director of Cornell’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program.
Dr. Sheppard received her B.A. in Film & Television Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from UCLA’s Department of Gender Studies.
Dr. Sheppard is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press) and has published widely on film and media in academic and popular venues such as Film Quarterly, The Atlantic, Flash Art International, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She has also been featured as a guest on Turner Classic Movies. In 2021, Dr. Sheppard was named a 2021 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.