DAWN HALL
Women in Film
PhD: Middle Tennessee State University
Dr. Dawn Hall teaches film, English, popular culture studies and gender at WKU. She has published extensively on the challenges and opportunities of American independent women filmmakers, including her book, ReFocus: The films of Kelly Reichardt (Edinburgh UP).
MARLA ZUBEL
World Cinema
PhD: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Dr. Marla Zubel studies and teaches twentieth century literature and film in a global context. Her current research examines a neglected archive of Eastern European cultural encounters with the Third World. She is particularly interested in the ways writers and filmmakers of the former Socialist Bloc turned to documentary, and other non-fiction genres and forms, in order to represent the relationship between the local and the global at the height of the Cold War.
JESS FOLK
Screenwriting
MFA: Chapman University
Jessica L. Folk primarily writes stories about queer women, identity, loss, and untold stories from history. Her screenplays have received various honors and awards at both national and international screenplay festivals and conferences, including the 25th Annual Beverly Hills Film Festival, the LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival, the Austin Film Festival, Script Awards Los Angeles, the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition, the California Women’s Film Festival, multiple ScreenCraft competitions, the Richmond International Film Festival, the Nashville Film Festival, the Big Apple Screenplay Competition, the University Film & Video Association juried screenplay competition, and others.