Anna Stenport

Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Anna Stenport is Dean of the Franklin College, a University of Georgia Foundation Professor of Arts and Sciences, and full professor in the Department of Communication Studies with a courtesy appointment in the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education.  Before joining the University of Georgia, one of her alma maters, she served as Professor of Communication and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York (2021-23). In her previous roles as Professor of Global Studies at Georgia Institute of Technology (2016-21), she served as Chair of the School of Modern Languages and Founding co-Director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center, a partnership with Georgia State University. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Uppsala University, Sweden. 

The author/co-author and editor/co-editor of eleven books and volumes, Dr. Stenport is an expert in Arctic and Nordic cinema, media, and cultural studies. Her most recent book is New Arctic Cinemas: Media Sovereignty and the Climate Crisis published in 2023 by the University of California Press. She has also published widely on Scandinavian drama and literature; transnational modernism; global popular music, and higher education innovation. Her research has been supported by the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship Program, the American Scandinavian Foundation, the Swedish American Foundation, the European Union Jean Monnet Program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her teaching includes courses in Global and Environmental Cinema, Global Media and Cultures, and Career Education for the Global 21st Century. 

Dr. Stenport has also held positions at the University of Illinois, where she served as Professor of Scandinavian Studies, with appointments in Comparative Literature, Gender and Women’s Studies, Global Studies, and Media and Cinema Studies. There she also served as Director of the Campus Office of Undergraduate Research and Director of the European Union Center, a Title VI National Resource Center and a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence. She has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; Queen’s University, Canada; and at several institutions in Scandinavia, including the Universities of Gothenburg and Stockholm; the Danish Film Institute; and KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Dr. Stenport has given hundreds of presentations about her research and academic leadership, and can be contacted at FCdean@uga.edu. 
 

Education:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY

  • Ph.D. Comparative Literature, 2004.

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

  • M.A., Literature, 1999. 
  • B.A., Literature, French, and Media Studies, 1996.

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

  • Non-degree seeking student, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, 1993-94.
Awards, Honors and Recognitions:

Selected Books and Edited Volumes 

  • New Arctic Cinemas: Media Sovereignty and the Climate Crisis. w/ Scott MacKenzie. University of California Press, 2023. 
  • Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Co-edited w/Arne Lunde.  Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
  • Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos. Ed. w/ Lilya Kaganovsky and Scott MacKenzie. Indiana University Press, 2019.
  • August Strindberg and Visual Culture: The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Theater, Text, and Image. Ed. w/ Jonathan Schroeder and Eszter Szalczer. Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 
  • Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene. Ed. w/ Scott MacKenzie and Lill-Ann Körber. Palgrave, 2017. 
  • Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic.  Ed. w/ Scott MacKenzie. Edinburgh University Press, 2015. 
  • The International Strindberg: New Critical Essays. Ed. Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012. 
  • Nordic Film Classics: Director Lukas Moodysson and ‘Show Me Love’. University of Washington Press, 2012.
  • Locating August Strindberg’s Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, Setting. University of Toronto Press, 2010. 

Selected Refereed Journal Articles 

  • “South Korea’s Arctic Policy: Political Motivations for 21st Century Global Engagement.” w/Eunji Kim. Polar Journal 11:1 (2021). 11-21.
  • “Radical Interdisciplinarity: Science, Technology, and the New Humanities of the 21st Century.” w/ Jenny Strakovsky and Ryan Gemliere. ADFL Bulletin 46:2 (2021). 28-43.
  • “The Origins of Ethnographic Filmmaking, the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Indigenous Cinema: An Alternative History of the Arctic.” w/ Scott MacKenzie. Visual Anthropology Review 36:1(2020). 137-161. 
  • “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).” w/ Scott MacKenzie. 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.” w/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” w/ Noelle Belanger. ARTMargins 6:2 (2017): 6-26.
  • “Contemporary Experimental Feminist Sámi Documentary: The Autobiographical Politics of Liselotte Wajstedt and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.” w/ Scott MacKenzie. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6.2 (2016): 169-182.  
  •  “Arnait: Inuit Women’s Collective Filmmaking, Coalitional Politics, and a Globalized Arctic.” w/Scott MacKenzie. 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).” w/ Mariah Larsson. Film History 27:4 (2015). 106-129.
  •  “The Eradication of Memory: Film Adaptations and Algorithms of the Digital”. w/ Garrett Traylor. Cinema Journal 55:1 (2015). 78-94.

Recent Book Chapters

  • “Madonna on Film: Geopolitics, Globalization, and Gender Politics.” In Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury. Ed. Gunnar Iversen and Scott MacKenzie. Edinburgh University Press. 2021. 97-112.
  • “Opening up the Post-War World in Color: 1950s Geopolitics and Spectacular Nordic Colonialism in the Arctic and in Africa.” In Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Ed. Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 105-125.
  •  “The Serpent’s Egg: Ingmar Bergman’s Exilic Elsewheres in 1970s New German and New Hollywood Cinema.” w/ Arne Lunde. In Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere. Ed. Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Arne Lunde. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 341-359. 
  •  “Tearing Up the Screen: Pia Arke’s Post-Colonial Processes.” w/ Scott MacKenzie. In Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age. Eds. Scott MacKenzie and Janine Marchessault. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 390-406.
  • “Women Arctic Explorers: In Front of and Behind the Camera.” w/ Mariah Larsson. In Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos. Eds. Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott MacKenzie, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport. Indiana University Press, 2019. 68-91.
  • “Nordic Remakes: The North in Hollywood.” In The Companion to Nordic Cinema, eds Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. 436-456. 

Selected Awards and Scholarly Distinctions

  • United Nations Association, Atlanta Chapter, 2019. Educational Impact Award.
  • Stanford University. Anna Lindh Fellow in the Europe Center & Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies. 2011-12
  • The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar, 2012-16.
  • The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Helen Corley Petit Award, 2011-12.
  • The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Center for Advanced Study Beckman Fellow, 2010-2011.
  • American Scandinavian Foundation. Fellowship, 2008.
  • University of California, Berkeley. Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2002-03.
  • Sweden-America Foundation. Doctoral Education Fellowship, 1999-2000.
  • Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, 1996-97.
  • Georgia Rotary Student Program, 1993-94. 

 

Contact Information

FCdean@uga.edu
Office: 220 Old College
Phone Number: (706) 542-1538

Other Information

Other Affiliations: Communication Studies, Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education

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