Michael Curtin

Michael Curtin is the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Professor of Film and Media Studies with affiliated appointments in Global Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies. He is also lead professor of the Mellichamp Global Dynamics Initiative and associate researcher at the Center for Sociological and Political Research in Paris.  Curtin is co-founder and former co-director of the Media Industries Project of the Carsey-Wolf Center. Before joining UCSB, he was director of Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of Cultural Studies at Indiana University. He has also held teaching or research appointments at Northwestern University, Renmin University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, and the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University. Curtin’s research and teaching focus on media globalization, cultural geography, industry and policy studies, and creative labor. His books include: Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor (University of California Press, 2016); Distribution Revolution: Conversations about the Digital Future of Film and Television (University of California Press, 2014), Reorienting Global Communication: Indian and Chinese Media Beyond Borders (University of Illinois Press, 2010), The American Television Industry (British Film Institute/Palgrave, 2009), and Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (University of California Press, 2007). Curtin is currently at work on Media Capital: The Cultural Geography of Globalization and Voices of Labor in the Age of Global Media.  He is co-editor of Media Industries, the Chinese Journal of Communication, and the British Film Institute’s International Screen Industries book series.