Staff

As Systems Administrator for Comparative Media Studies, GAMBIT, and Project nml, Rik Eberhardt's current duties include maintaining the ever growing array of servers, lab computers, websites, and databases generated by our research projects, procuring and distributing equipment, and providing hands-on support for CMS faculty, students, researchers, and staff. A 2002 graduate from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, he received his Bachelor of Arts with a Literary & Cultural Studies concentration in Postmodern Literature, 'Cyberpunk' Science Fiction, and Contemporary Japanese Literature in Translation. His previous professional experience was as a Desktop and Lab Systems Technician for Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. The ending to Shadow of the Collossus made him cry.

Dr. Kurt Fendt is Research Director in Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Comparative Media Studies Graduate Program (CMS). He is Director of the HyperStudio, a development laboratory for educational media projects in the humanities and co-Principal Investigator and Manager of the d'Arbeloff-funded Metamedia project. He has held Visiting Professorships at the University of Cologne, the Technical University of Aachen (both Germany), and the University of Klagenfurt, Austria; he was also Visiting Scientist at the Fraunhofer Institut in Sankt Augustin, Germany. His work includes the conceptualization and implementation of multimedia applications for the humanities, with a special focus on foreign-language and culture education, interaction design, and research on hypertext and narrative theory. Since 2005, he has been organizing the MIT Short Film Festival.

Fendt teaches several courses in the CMS Graduate Program, in Foreign Languages and Literatures, and the Literature Section. He is co- Director of "Berliner sehen", a collaborative hypermedia learning environment for German Studies, the on-line collaboration space for educators "Berliner sehen Exchange", and co-author of the French interactive narrative A la rencontre de Philippe (CD-ROM version). Before coming to MIT in 1993, Fendt was Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Bern in Switzerland, where he established the Media Learning Center for the Humanities and earned his Ph.D. in modern German literature with a thesis on hypertext and text theory in 1993 after having completed his MA at the University of Munich, Germany.

Generoso Fierro (Gene) is the events coordinator for CMS and the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, and works closely with our visiting scholars and research affiliates. Currently, Generoso is the membership director of the MIT radio station WMBR, where he is the longtime DJ of the program Generoso's Bovine Ska and Rocksteady. The show concentrates on the music of Jamaica prior to reggae (mento, ska and rocksteady) and has been on the air since 1997. A filmmaker and avid film fan, Gene recently finished a documentary on the legendary Jamaican guitarist Nearlin "Lynn" Taitt.

Amanda Ford is the new administrative assistant for the CMS office. She graduated from Western Kentucky University in 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in literature and a minor in film studies. Since graduation, she has presented at the national Popular Culture Association conference on interdisciplinary studies in higher education and has taken further classes in history. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, who is also employed by CMS, and their two dogs.

Ximena Forero-Irizarry is CMS' new financial assistant. Irizarry has years of experience as a financial administrator at MIT in Information Services and Technology (IS&T) and the Center for Materials Science and Engineering. When not crunching numbers, she watches her two sons and enjoys comic books, particularly Superman.

Joshua Green recently completed his PhD in Media Studies from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. His PhD looked at the construction, scheduling and reception of American teen dramas in Australia. Since completing his PhD he has worked in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. In 2006 he collaborated with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, Australia, preparing content and developing an accompanying publication for TV50, an exhibition celebrating 50 years of Australian broadcasting. He has published work on Australian television scheduling strategies, youth media use, the history of Australian television and the construction of the cultural public sphere. His current research interests include television branding strategies, the history and future of broadcast television, co-created media production and the knowledge produced by passionate amateurs.

Leila Kinney directs the academic programs in CMS including the graduate and undergraduate programs, the visiting scholars program and the Post-Doctoral Fellows program. Before joining CMS, she taught modern art history for twelve years in the History Theory and Criticism section (HTC) of the Department of Architecture at MIT and contributed to CMS and Women’s Studies courses. Her publications address the work of early modernist painters, world fairs, hybrid artistic genres, and new visual technologies in the nineteenth century. She served as Electronic Editor for the College Art Association and co-founder of its online reviews journal www.caareviews.org. She has written about copyright, archives, and the virtual museum in the digital era, issues that affect the recently established art book press Periscope Publishing LTD, where she is an Executive Board member. Kinney earned a BA in English Literature and Art History from Agnes Scott College and an MA in History of Art from Yale University.

Scot Osterweil leads several Education Arcade projects promoting learning in math, literacy, history, science and foreign language. Formerly the Senior Designer at TERC, a research & development center devoted to math and science education, he designed Zoombinis Island Odyssey, winner of the 2003 Bologna New Media Prize, and the most recent game in the Zoombinis line of products (Riverdeep/TLC). He is the creator of the Zoombinis, and with Chris Hancock he co-designed the multi-award winning Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and its first sequel, Zoombinis Mountain Rescue. He is the also the designer of the games Switchback and Yoiks!.

Scot's other software designs included work on InspireData (Inspiration Software). He has participated in research on the role of computer games in learning, and on the use of video in data collection and representation. He previously worked in television, on the production of Public Television's Frontline, Evening at Pops, and American Playhouse, and as an animator on a wide range of programs. He is a graduate of Yale College with a degree in Theater Studies.

Douglas Purdy is the Manager of the Humanities Film Office. He is also the teaching assistant for Kung Fu Cinema: Transnational Perspectives. Purdy has been a DJ at WZBC's Beyond the QE2: Future Funk Radio, one of Boston's longest-running dance shows. He has completed a horror novel and is currently plodding through the second. His most recent publication was in the small press anthology, Vivisections.

Brad Seawell coordinates the MIT Communications Forum and helps to promote and organize some CMS public events including the media-in-transition conferences. He is associate editor of the media-in-transition anthologies Rethinking New Media: The Aesthetics of Transition and Democracy and New Media. Prior to working at MIT, he was an editor at Banker & Tradesman, a business weekly based in Boston.

Prior to working for CMS, Undergraduate Administrator Becky Shepardson was an administrative assistant for the Computer Science and AI Lab at MIT. She continues to work part-time as an editorial assistant for the theoretical computer science journal Information and Computation, edited by Albert Meyer. Interesting coincidence:  Albert Meyer was the Chair of the CoC (Committee on Curricula) when the CMS Undergraduate Major was approved on an experimental basis in 2003.  Becky is finishing up a master’s degree in Applied Linguistics at Boston University.

Philip Tan is the executive director for the Cambridge operations of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a multi-year game innovation initiative hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is concurrently a project manager for the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore and a member of the steering committee of the Singapore chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).

Prior to his current position, he worked closely with Singapore game developers to launch industry-wide initiatives and administer content development grants as an assistant manager in the Animation & Games Industry Development section of MDA. He has produced and designed PC online games at The Education Arcade, a research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that studied and created educational games. He complements a Master's degree in Comparative Media Studies with work in Boston's School of Museum of Fine Arts, the MIT Media Lab, WMBR 88.1FM and the MIT Assassins' Guild, the latter awarding him the title of "Master Assassin" for his live-action roleplaying game designs. He also founded a live DJ crew at MIT.

Anna van Someren is creative manager for the MacArthur Foundation's New Media Literacies (NML) project. Prior to working at MIT, Anna was Youth Voice Collaborative Program Coordinator at the YWCA Boston, where she developed new media curriculum and taught multimedia production workshops. She has taught Digital Editing and Video Storytelling at the college level and is also an accomplished commerical editor and award-wining video artist. Anna is a graduate of Colgate University and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art.

As the program administrator for CMS, Sarah Wolozin manages the financial and research administration, staffing, legal issues, and general administration and outreach for the program. She also administers the graduate program. Before arriving at CMS, she produced documentaries and websites for PBS and cable for over ten years on topics ranging from African-American arts to American healthcare.