NICHOLAS FORSTER
Assistant Professor, Cinema Studies, University of Oregon
Welcome! I am a scholar and critic interested in cinema, popular culture, music, and black performance over the last century.
I received my PhD in African American Studies and Film & Media Studies at Yale University and am currently working on a biography of the actor-writer-filmmaker-director Bill Gunn.
While Gunn is most well known for directing the 1973 art-horror film Ganja and Hess, his work on the stage, the page, and the screen spans four decades. I'm grateful for the support provided for this project as a 2022-2023 a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography!
​
I occasionally publish a newsletter about actors and acting, which you can access here!
​
Other research interests include the work of Nicholas Ray, the films of the Black Power era, the African American novel in the middle of the twentieth century, and sound recording technologies.
