Colleen A. Laird (PhD, University of Oregon) is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Film and Popular Culture in the Department of Asian Studies. She is the author of “Imaging a Female Filmmaker: The Director Personas of Nishikawa Miwa and Ogigami Naoko” (Frames Cinema Journal), “Star gazing: Sight lines and studio brands in post-war Japanese film posters” (The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema), and “Japanese Cinema, the Classroom, and Swallowtail Butterfly” (Jump Cut). Her pedagogy and research re/de-centers the study of media from North American/Hollywood geopolitics to the East Asian diaspora and challenges a cis-male vision of media by shifting attention to diverse viewpoints and experiences throughout the historical development of Japanese media. She is currently working on a monograph on Japanese women film directors for fellow film scholars and cinema enthusiasts as well as exploring the medium of video essays to reach general audiences.