Alison Griffiths
Alison Griffiths is an internationally recognized scholar whose books have had a major impact on the fields of anthropology, cultural history, cinema studies, nineteenth century visual culture, and new media studies. Her first book, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture (Columbia University Press, 2002) won several major awards, and her second book, Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View (Columbia University Press, 2008) confirmed her expertise in interdisciplinary research across the fields of art history, museum studies, and media archaeology. Her latest book, Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prisons in Twentieth Century America, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Professor Griffiths teaches film and media studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College and in the Doctoral Program in Theater at the CUNY Graduate Center, and was a visiting professor at Stockholm University. Professor Griffiths served as a Faculty Fellow in Global Strategies at Baruch College and was a member of the WSAS Strategic Planning Committee and the WSAS Graduate Affairs committee. Before moving to New York, she taught at Elm Park (now Stanmore) College and Amersham & Wycombe College in London. The recipient of grants from the Woodrow Wilson organization, the NEH, and the Eugene Lang Foundation, she holds a bachelors degree from Leicester University, a masters from the University of London, and a Ph.D. from New York University.
Works

Carceral Fantasies: Cinema and Prisons in Early Twentieth Century America
A groundbreaking contribution to the study of film exhibition, Carceral Fantasies tells the little-known story of how cinema found a home in the US penitentiary and how the prison and capital punishment emerged as settings and narrative tropes in modern cinema.
“‘Journeys For Those Who Can Not Travel’: Promenade Cinema and the Museum Life Group”
“Knowledge and Visuality in Turn of the Century Anthropology: The Early Ethnographic Cinema of Alfred Cort Haddon and Walter Baldwin Spencer”
“Magic, Wonder and the Fantastical Margins: Medieval Visual Culture and Cinematic Special Effects”
“‘Shivers Down Your Spine’: Panoramas, Illusionism, and the Origins of the Cinematic Reenactment”
“Tableaux Mort: Execution, Cinema, and Galvanistic Fantasies”
Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, and the Immersive View
Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture
‘“Yes in Truth all the World Was There’: World’s Fairs and the Social Horizon of Early Ethnographic Film”
“Playing at Being Indian: Spectatorship and the Early Western”
"Media Technology and Museum Display: A Century of Accommodation and Conflict"
“A Moving Picture of the Heavens: Immersion in the Planetarium Space Show”
“The Untrammeled Camera: A Topos of the Ethnographic Expedition Film”
“‘To the World the World We Show’: Early Travelogues as Filmed Ethnography”
“A Portal to the Outside World: Motion Pictures Arrive in the Penitentiary”
“Sensual Vision: 3-D, Medieval Art, and the Cinematic Imaginary”
“’They Go to See A Show’: Vicissitudes of Spectating and the Anxiety Over the Machine in the Nineteenth Century Science Museum”
“The 1920s Museum Sponsored Expedition Film: Beguiling Encounters in All But Forgotten Genre”
“Discourses of Nationalism in Guru Dutt’s Pyassa”
“‘A Moving Picture in Two Senses’: Allegories of the Nation in 1950s Indian Melodrama”
“Ethnography and Popular Memory: Postmodern Configurations of Welsh Identities”
Awards and Recognition
- Best Published Essay in the Field of Cinema and Media Studies Society for Cinema and Media Studies March 2004 Honorary Mention (second place) for Best Essay: “‘Shivers Down Your Spine’: Panoramas, Illusionism, and the Origins of the Cinematic Reenactment,” "Screen," Vol. 44, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 1-37. Krazna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award Krazna-Krausz Foundation April 2003 Honorable Mention ($1,800 prize). One of two runners up for book: "Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture" (Columbia University Press). Katherine S. Kovács Book Award Society for Cinema and Media Studies February 2003 Won the Best Published Book in Cinema and Media Studies Annual Award. Sixteenth Annual Dissertation Award Society for Cinema and Media Studies April 1999 $1,000 Award for the Best Dissertation in the field of Cinema and Media Studies