- PhD, Film and Media Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 2024
- MA, Film Studies, University of Iowa, 2019
- BA, History, Film Studies, Gender Studies, Brandeis University, 2016
About
Eli Boonin-Vail is a Lecturer and the director of the Film Studies Minor at University at Albany, State University of New York. He teaches a variety of history, theory and production courses in film and media, with a specialization in Black, Hollywood and Documentary film and media as well as comics studies. His research currently focuses on American cinemas, Hollywood and independent, in their relationship to the prison industrial complex in the 20th and 21st centuries.
His work can be found or is forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journals Animation Studies, Inks, Film Criticism, French Screen Studies, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, InMediaRes, and Music, Sound, and The Moving Image, as well as the edited collections Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in Early Comics, 1900 – 1960 and A Century of 16mm. Dr. Boonin-Vail also produces peer-reviewed videographic research using mixed media methods and enjoys teaching this approach to his students.
Publications
Journal Articles
“A Jury of One’s Peers: Incarcerated Film Festivals as Carceral Spheres,” JCMS, Under Revision.
“The Toilet View: Riot in Cell Block 11, Prison Collaboration, and the Production Code Administration,” The Quarterly Review of Film and Video 42, no. 1 (2025): 250-281. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2024.2440682.
“In the Slammer: Acoustemologies of the Carceral in the Prisons of Classical Hollywood.” Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 17, no. 1 (2023): 43-63. https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2023.3.
“The System of the Genius: French New Wave and the Politique des Producteurs.” French Screen Studies 23, no. 4 (2023): 305-322. https://doi.org/10.1080/26438941.2022.2057665.
“Visible Stripes: Reenacting Trauma in Hollywood’s Carceral Aesthetics.” Film Criticism 45, no. 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.1032.
“‘The Body of the Nation’: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther and the Black Literary Tradition.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 4, no. 2 (2020): 135–55. https://doi.org/10.1353/ink.2020.0011.
“Queer Proteus: Towards a Theory of the Animated Child.” Animation Studies 14, Spring 2019. https://journal.animationstudies.org/eli-boonin-vail-queer-proteus-towards-a-theory-ofthe-animated-child.
Book Chapters
“Cruel Portability: Discourses and Techniques of 16mm in the American Journal of Correction,” Century of 16mm edited collection through Indiana University Press. Forthcoming.
“Hello Public! Jackie Ormes in the Print Culture of the Pittsburgh Courier.” in Desegregating Comics. Edited by Qiana Whitted. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 2023.
Book Reviews
Brian Jacobson, The Cinema of Extractions: Film Materials and Their Forms. In Early Popular Visual Culture, Forthcoming.
Film and Video Projects
“Panorama of Western State Penitentiary,” [in]Transition, June 11, 2025. https://doi.org/10.16995/intransition.17591.
“Choosing the Toilet View: Censorship and Collaboration within Hollywood’s Prison Industrial Complex,” In Media Res, January 23, 2024. https://mediacommons.org/imr/content/choosing-toilet-view-censorship-andcollaboration-within-hollywood%E2%80%99s-prison-industrial.
“Painting With Light,” Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference Artifice Creative Showcase, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, February 2019. Finalist, First in the Nation Film Festival, Iowa City, Iowa, January 2020.
“Letter to Frank,” Cinematic Arts Colloquium, University of Iowa, March 2018.
Talks & Presentations
- “Hollywood’s Prison Industrial Complex: Midcentury Correctional Liaisons With the Studio System,” The Hollywood Conference, University of Southern California, July 2025.
- “Chaining Melodies: Blackness, Popular Licensing, and Incarcerating Sound in Unchained (1955),” Music and the Moving Image Conference, New York University, May 2025.
- “Prison Vernacular: The Incarcerated Visual Culture of San Quentin,” Minority Identities and Vernacular Visual Culture, University of Chicago, May 2025.
- “The Prison-University-Cinema-Industrial Complex: Design for Correction (1963) and Film Studies as a Carceral Enterprise,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, April 2025.
- “Unity Is the Solution: 1970s Black Independent Film in the Long Attica Revolt,” Melvin Van Peebles Symposium, Ohio Wesleyan University, March 2025.
- “Incarcerated Amateurs: Media Labors of the San Quentin Inmate Film Workshop (1965–1970),” Amateur Cinema: A Global History Conference, Barcelona, November 2024.
- “Carceral Geographies and Rebellious Filmmaking: Utilizing ArcGIS to Map the L.A. Rebellion,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Boston, March 2024.
- “A Guided Tour of a Prison Without Walls: Grey Area (1982), Sue Booker, and Black Counter-Carceral Mediascapes,” Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture, Tulane University, February 2024.
- “The Prison World of Film: Discourses and Techniques of 16mm in The American Journal of Correction,” A Century of 16mm Conference, University of Indiana, September 2023.
- “‘That’s What America Means: Prison’ – Teach Our Children (1972) as Proto-Abolitionist Geography,” Visible Evidence XXIX, University of Udine, September 2023.
- “Prison/Rebellion: The Los Angeles Black Independent Film Movement in the Shadow of the Carceral State,” Screen Studies Conference, Glasgow, June 2023.
- “Human Accumulation and Carceral Excess: Walter Wanger at the Dawn of California’s Neocarceral Regime,” University of Southern California Graduate Conference, Los Angeles, October 2022.
- “The System of the Genius: Pierre Braunberger and the French New Wave’s Politique des Producteurs,” Pitt–Lyon 2 International Colloquium, Pittsburgh, April 2022.
- “No Prisoner Ever Had So Many Curious Onlookers: Canon City (1948) and Hollywood’s Carceral Exploitation,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Virtual, April 2022.
- “Eye-Arresting: Transcarcerality and Prison False Fronts of the Classical Hollywood Era,” San Francisco State University Graduate Conference, San Francisco, February 2022.
- “The Naked Fury of Fact!: Canon City (1948) and Carceral Semi-Documentary Exploitation,” Visible Evidence XXVII, Frankfurt am Main, December 2021.
- “In the Slammer: Counter-Carceral Acoustemologies in Walter Wanger’s Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954),” Screen Studies Conference, Virtual, June 2021.
- “The System of the Genius: French New Wave and the Politique des Producteurs,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Virtual, March 2021.
- “A Matter of Light and Death: Convulsions of Modernity in Execution of Czolgosz With Panorama of Auburn Prison,” Yale Film & Media Graduate Studies Conference, New Haven, March 2020.
- “‘A High-Grade Machine and Skilled Operator’: Exposition Image/Sound Aesthetics of Chautauqua in Circuit and Assembly Contexts,” University of Pittsburgh Film and Media Graduate Student Conference, Pittsburgh, September 2019.
- “Legacies of Renoir’s La Grande Illusion for the Midcentury Carceral Imaginary in Bresson, Melville, and Genet,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Seattle, March 2019.
- “The Revolting Image: Eisenstein’s Queer Desiring Forms,” Cinema Studies Institute Graduate Conference, University of Toronto, January 2019.
- “Queer Proteus: Toward a Theory of the Animated Child,” Society for Animation Studies Annual Conference, Concordia University, Montreal, June 2018.
- Craft Critique Culture Conference, University of Iowa, April 2018.
Instruction & Advising
Courses
- AARH 461 – Women in Cinema, Spring 2026. Upper-level seminar in theory and history of gender and feminism in film.
- AARH 460 – Global Black Film and Media, Spring 2025. Upper-level seminar in Global Black diasporic film and media.
- AARH 289 – Film History II – 1945 – Present, Fall 2025. Mid-level seminar involving archival research and digital mapping project.
- AARH 260 – Introduction to Film Studies, Fall 2024, 2025, Spring 2025, Summer 2025. Lectured and graded introductory survey level course of 60 – 100 students.
- AARH 369 – Experimental Film and Video, Fall 2024 o Production, history, and theory course emphasizing experimental learning and making in camera operation, concept design, and nonlinear editing software.
Additional Information
Awards & Honors
- CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, Nominee, University of Pittsburgh,
2025 - Individual Development Award, New York State United University Professions, 2025
- Susan Hayward Prize, French Screen Studies Editorial Board, 2023
- Visualizing Abolition Mellon Workshop Fellow, UC Santa Cruz, April 2023
- Richard C. and Barbara N. Tobias Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, Department of English, Academic year 2022-2023
- Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award, Society of Cinema and Media Studies, Runner Up, October 2021
- Graduate Writing Award, University of Pittsburgh Film and Media Studies, April 2020
- Emru Townsend Award. Society for Animation Studies, June 2018