Anna Stenport

Professor, Communication Studies and Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia

Dr. Anna Stenport is Professor of Communication Studies and, as of June 1 2023, the Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. Previously she has served as Professor of Communication and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York (2021-23), Professor of Global Studies at Georgia Institute of Technology (2016-21), and Chair of the School of Modern Languages and Founding co-Director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center.

Holding a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Stenport’s expertise includes transnational cinema and media, modern literature and drama, and visual and cultural studies. She has been a Visiting Professor and Anna Lindh Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute and at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she taught in the interdisciplinary field site summer program Environment and Society in a Changing Arctic in Svalbard and Sápmi. 

Dr. Stenport is an expert in Arctic and Nordic cinema, media, and cultural studies. Dr. Stenport has published widely on these topics in journals such as Camera Obscura, Cinema Journal, Convergence, Environmental Media, Film History, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Media, Culture & Society, and The Moving Image. Her most recent book on the topic New Arctic Cinemas: Media Sovereignty and the Climate Crisis was published in 2023 by the University of California Press. Her other books include the groundbreaking volume Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (Edinburgh UP, 2015; co-ed. w/ Scott MacKenzie), the first comprehensive examination of filmmaking in the global circumpolar north from 1896 to the present, as well as Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History series, 2017; co-ed. w/ Lill-Ann Körber & Scott MacKenzie), and Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (Indiana UP, 2019; co-ed w/ Lilya Kaganovsky and Scott MacKenzie). Current sponsored research includes “Visualizing Climate Change Through Arctic Moving Images” (w/ Scott MacKenzie), funded by an Insight grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Dr. Stenport also co-curates Arctic film programs at conferences (ASTRA 2015, Visible Evidence 2015, SASS 2016,) and for film festivals, including the Annual Polar Film Festival at the Explorers Club in NYC (2016-2020), the 13th Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Budapest (2016), and the European Union Film Festival, Chicago (2017). 

Dr. Stenport’s scholarship on contemporary Scandinavian film includes Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere (Edinburgh UP, 2019; co-ed with Arne Lunde); a monograph on New Queer Cinema director Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love, published in the Nordic Film Classics series (U Washington P, 2012); and articles in a special Moodysson issue of Scandinavica (51:3, 2014). She has also written extensively about Scandinavian popular culture, including Nordic Noir crime fiction and film and the Millenium series, and was interviewed on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on the topic.  

As a scholar of modernism in literature, theatre, and the visual arts, Dr. Stenport has published August Strindberg and Visual Culture: The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Theater, Text, and Image (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019; co-ed w/ Eszter Szalczer and Jonathan Schroeder). Her work has been featured in ARTMargins, Comparative Literature, English Language Notes, Modern Drama, and Modernism/Modernity, among many other journals. She is an expert on playwright, novelist, and artist August Strindberg, and her publications in this area include Locating August Strindberg’s Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, Setting (U Toronto P, 2010), The International Strindberg: New Critical Essays (ed., Northwestern UP, 2012), and Strindberg and Radicalism – Strindberg and the Avant-Garde: A Hundred Year Legacy, an extended special issue of the journal Scandinavian Studies (2012 84:3; co-edited w/Eszter Szalczer).  

Anna has published more than five dozen peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has given hundreds of presentations about her research and academic interests.

Selected Publications 

BOOKS  

Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos. Eds. Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780253040299. 

Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Eds. Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde. Traditions in World Cinema series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781474438056  

Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene. Eds. Lill-Ann Körber, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. London: Palgrave, 2017. ISBN: 978-3319391168.  

Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic.  Eds. Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Traditions in World Cinema series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9781474409018 

JOURNAL ARTICLES 

 “An Alternative History of the Arctic: The Origins of Ethnographic Filmmaking, The Fifth Thule Expedition, and Indigenous Cinema.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Forthcoming in Visual Anthropology Review 40:1 (2020).  

 “Visualizing Climate Change in the Arctic and Beyond: Big Data in the Anthropocene, Multimodal Media Cultures, and the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP).” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Journal of Environmental Media 1:1 (2019). 79-99.  

 “Polar Bears and Ice: Cultural Connotations of Arctic Environments that Contradict the Science of Climate Change.” Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Richard Vachula. Media, Culture & Society 39:2 (2017). 282-295.  

 “The Global Politics of Color in the Arctic Landscape: Blackness at the Center of Frederic Edwin Church’s Aurora Borealis (1865) and Nineteenth-Century Limits of Representation” Noelle Belanger and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. ARTMargins 6:2 (2017): 6-26.  

 “Action, Avatar, Ecology, and Empire: Digitality, Death, and Gaming in Werner Herzog’s Arctic Archive.” Scott MacKenzie, Anna Westerstahl Stenport, and Garrett Traylor. The Moving Image 16:2 (2016): 45-71.  

 “Contemporary Experimental Feminist Sámi Documentary: The Autobiographical Politics of Liselotte Wajstedt and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 6.2 (2016): 169-182.   

 “Arnait: Inuit Women’s Collective Filmmaking, Coalitional Politics, and a Globalized Arctic.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 30.3 (2016). 153-163.    

 “Documentary Filmmaking as Colonialist Propaganda and Cinefeminist Intervention: Mai Zetterling’s Of Seals and Men (1979).” Mariah Larsson and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Film History 27:4 (2015). 106-129.  

 “All That’s Frozen Melts Into Air: Arctic Cinemas at the End of the World.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Public: Art Culture Ideas 48 (2013). 81-91. 

BOOK CHAPTERS 

 “Introduction: Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere.” Patrick Ellis, Arne Lunde, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Ed. Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 1-24.  

 “Opening up the Post-War World in Color: 1950s Geopolitics and Spectacular Nordic Colonialism in the Arctic and in Africa.” Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Ed. Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 105-125. 

 “Tearing Up the Screen: Pia Arke’s Post-Colonial Processes.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age. Eds. Scott MacKenzie and Janine Marchessault. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 390-406.  

 “The Polarities and Hybridities of Arctic Cinemas.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinemas. Eds. Janine Marchessault and Will Straw. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 125-146.     

 “Introduction: The Documentary Ethos and the Arctic.” Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, ed. Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. 1-29.

18. “Women Arctic Explorers: In Front of and Behind the Camera.” Mariah Larsson and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, eds. Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. 68-91. 

 “北极情节剧: 跨过北方的边境和女性的自我重新定位” (‘The Melodramatic Arctic: Northern Border Crossings and Women’s Self-Repositioning’,). Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In媒体生态研究项目语境下的性别化表演研究新论. Ed. Chuanfa Wan. Beijing: China Film Press, 2018. 58-65.  

 “Introduction: Arctic Environmental Modernities: Politics and Representations from the Age of the Explorers to the Era of the Anthropocene.” Lill-Ann Korber, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport In Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of the Explorers to the Era of the Anthropocene. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. 1-20.  

 “Nordic Remakes: The North in Hollywood.” In The Companion to Nordic Cinema, eds Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. 436-456.   

“Introduction: What Are Arctic Cinemas?” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic. Ed. Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport.  Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015. 1-28.    

“The Threat of the Thaw: The Cold War on the Screen.” Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic, eds. Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015. 163-177.  

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, CATALOGUE ENTRIES, AND POPULAR MEDIA 

“Towards No Earthly Pole: An Alternative Film History of the Arctic and Polar Regions.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. In Julian Charrière’s Towards No Earthly Pole. Lugano: Wellerman & Co. Forthcoming 2020.  

“The Melodramatic Arctic: Northern Border Crossings and Women’s Self-Repositioning.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Histories, Her-Stories, and Methods. Proceedings from the Women and Silent Screen International Conference IX. Shanghai: Shanghai Film Museum, 2017. 29-34.   

 “Arctic Environments, Resource Extraction, and Indigenous Women Documentary Filmmakers.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival Catalogue 2017. Harstad: AMIFF, 2017. 11-12. Web: http://www.amiff.no/article-1/  

“Sumé, Grønland og den sosialhistoriske rockumentaren.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Z filmtidsskrift 2017. 28-39.   

“A jég hátán: Klímaváltozás idején.” Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerstahl Stenport Verzió Nemzetközi Emberi Jogi Dokumentumfilm Fesztivál 13/Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Program 13. Budapest: Verzio, 2016: 51.  

Anna Westerstahl Stenport can be contacted at aws@gatech.edu.