Cynthia Fuchs

Cynthia Fuchs

Cynthia Fuchs

Associate Professor

Antiracist everything, documentary and fiction film, television, social media, war media, sports media, Black media, LGBTQ+ media, horror, action, and science fiction movies and TV, gender and sexuality.

Cynthia Fuchs is the co-founder and Interim Director of the Film and Video Studies Program. interim Director of Film at Mason (CVPA) and Associate Professor. She serves on the Executive Committees for African and African American Studies (AAAS) and Women and Gender Studies (WGST). She is affiliated with Sport and American Culture.

She is the creator and curator of the Visiting Filmmakers Series at Mason. See VFS Linktree.

In 2020, Professor Fuchs was awarded the United Bank Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion, presented to a faculty member who has made extraordinary contributions to advancing diversity and inclusion within the Mason community and beyond. Cynthia Fuchs has worked in the areas of antiracism and inclusion for decades, and continues to do so as a member of CVPA's Antiracist and Inclusive Excellence Advisory Team and Kritikos Antiracist Reading Group Organizing Committee, as well as the Stearns Center ARIE Curriculum and Pedagogy Working Group.

Professor Fuchs has written reviews and essays, and served as an editor for the international cultural studies magazine, PopMatters. She has written reviews for many venues, including the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Philadelphia Citypaper, Screenit.com, NPR, and Common Sense Media. She is a frequent jurist for the Gotham Independent Film Awards. She has spoken at AFI Docs, Smithsonian American Art Museum, DC's Cinema Club, the Rosebud Independent Film Festival, and the Goethe-Institut in DC.

Selected Publications

Iraq War Cultures. Edited by Cynthia Fuchs and Joe Lockard, Peter Lang Publishers 2011.

Spike Lee: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers). Edited by Cynthia Fuchs. University Press of Mississippi 2002.

Between the Sheets, in the Streets: Queer, Lesbian, Gay Documentary (Visible Evidence). Edited  by Chris Holmlund and Cynthia Fuchs. University Of Minnesota Press 1997.

"'A Few Brief Moments': Truth and Image in Sports Documentaries." Gender and Genre in Sports Documentaries: Critical Essays. Edited by Zachary Ingle and David M. Sutera. Scarecrow Press 2012. 

Expanded Publication List

Interview with Kasi Lemmons. “Caveman's Valentine: 'I Just Like to Stir It Up a Little.'" Reprinted from Nitrate Online March 9, 2001. Editor Christina N. Baker, Kasi Lemmons: Interviews, University Press of Mississippi 2021. 

"'A mosaic technique': Interview with Fred Schepisi," from PopMatters 7 December 2001, in Interviews with Fred Schepisi, edited by Tom Ryan. University Press of Mississippi 2016. 

"'You Just Want Stories': Iraqi Subjects, American Documentaries." Iraq War Cultures. Eds. Cynthia Fuchs and Joe Lockard. New York: Peter Lang 2011. 

"Unsportsmanlike Call." In Media Res. 2009.

"'Did anyone ever explain to you what "secret identity" means?': Race and Displacement in Buffy and Dark Angel." Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Edited by Lisa Parks and Elana Levine. Duke University Press 2007.

"'What all the fuss is about': Making Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise." Thelma & Louise Live!: The Cultural Afterlife of an American Film. Edited by Bernard Cook. University of Texas Press. October 2007.

"'I'm from rags to riches': The Death of Jay-Z." Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones. Edited by Roger Beebe and Jason Mittel. Duke University Press 2007.

"Un- de- re- classified: Adel Hamad's case goes to YouTube." In Media Res 2007. 

"'Ole ignorant boys, always stunnin': gold teeth, the Hot Boys, and representing intelligence." Popping Culture. Edited by Murray Pomerance and John Sakeris. Boston: Pearson Education 2003; Second Edition 2004; Third edition 2007.

"Too Big." Guernica 2005. 

"Taxi Driver: "I got some bad ideas in my head." Film Analysis: A Norton Reader.  WW Norton & Company. Edited by Randy Rutsky. Norton 2005. 

"'The whole fucking world warped around me': bad kids and contexts." Bad: Infamy, Darkness, Evil, and Slime on Screen. Edited by Murray Pomerance. SUNY Press 2003.

"'Too much of something is bad enough': success and excess in Spiceworld." Sugar, Spice, and Everything Else: Cinemas of Girlhood. Edited by Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

"'What do we say happened here?': Memory, Identity, and the Vietnam War." Vietnam and Postmodernity. Edited by Michael Bibby. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2000.

"'If I had a dick': queers, punks, and alternative acts." Mapping the Beat. Edited by Thomas Swiss, John Sloop, and Andrew Herman. London: Blackwell. 1997.

"'I wanna be your fantasy': Sex, death, and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince." Women and Performance, Special Issue: Queer Acts 16. Edited by Jose Esteban Munoz and Amanda Barrett. 1996.

"Michael Jackson's Penis." Cruising the Performative. Edited by Philip Brett, Sue-Ellen Case, and Susan Foster. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1995.

"'Beat me outta me': alternative masculinities." Boys: Masculinities in Contemporary Culture. Edited by Paul Smith. Boulder CO: Westview Press. 1996.

"'Death is irrelevant': Cyborgs, Reproduction, and the Future of Male Hysteria." Genders: Special Issue on Cyberpunk 18. Edited by Thomas Foster (1993), 113-133. Reprinted in The Cyborg Handbook. Edited by Chris Hables Gray. New York: Routledge. 1995.

Courses Taught

FAVS 304: Ways of Thinking, FAVS 225: Intro to World Cinema; FAVS 300: Global Horror; plus these courses: Intro to Documentary; TV+Twitter; Introduction to Film; War Documentaries; Sports as Media; Sports-race-media; Crisis Media; Race, Politics, Documentary; Black popular cultures; Queer cinema; Girls on Film. 

Education

  • BA, University of Connecticut
  • PhD, University of Pennsylvania