Charles Musser

Professor of Film Studies
and American Studies
Director of Summer Film Institute
charles.musser@yale.edu

Charles Musser teaches courses on film historiography, American cinema, and documentary film, video and photography. His The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (1990 ) received the Jay Leyda Prize in Cinema Studies, the Theater Library Association Award for best book on Film, TV and Radio, the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for outstanding book in Media Studies and other awards. His other books include Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (1991), High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920 (with Carol Nelson, 1991), and Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900: An Annotated Filmography (1997). More recently, he co-edited Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era (2001) with Jane Gaines and Pearl Bowser. As a documentary filmmaker, he produced and directed the prize-winning An American Potter (1976) and Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982).  Charlie is currently working on several book projects which include Paul Robeson and Film and Cinema and the Transformation of Theatrical Culture. The one nearest completion is entitled Truth and Documentary in the Age of George W. Bush. He is also Director of the Summer Film Institute.