Peter J. Bloom is Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and served as Department chair from 2020-23. He has published widely on British, French, and Belgian colonial media including French Colonial Documentary, Frenchness and the African Diaspora (co-editor), and Modernization as Spectacle in Africa (co-editor), among other publications. He recently completed a co- edited volume with Dominique Jullien, entitled Screens and Illusionism: Alternative Teleologies of Mediation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). With a geographical focus on West Africa and Southeast Asia, he is preparing a monograph entitled, Radio- Cinema Modernity: The Catoptrics of Empire. In addition, he is working on several other projects focused on media technologies of performance, the adaptation of nkisi nail sculpture idioms by contemporary African artists, and global film and media studio production sites as a study of locality and delocalization. He teaches a wide array of graduate and undergraduate courses; in Winter 2025, he will be teaching an undergraduate lecture course on Film Theory (FAMST 192FT).Peter J. Bloom is Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, and served as Department chair from 2020-23. He has published widely on British, French, and Belgian colonial media including French Colonial Documentary, Frenchness and the African Diaspora (co-editor), and Modernization as Spectacle in Africa (co-editor), among other publications. He recently completed a co- edited volume with Dominique Jullien, entitled Screens and Illusionism: Alternative Teleologies of Mediation (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). With a geographical focus on West Africa and Southeast Asia, he is preparing a monograph entitled, Radio- Cinema Modernity: The Catoptrics of Empire. In addition, he is working on several other projects focused on media technologies of performance, the adaptation of nkisi nail sculpture idioms by contemporary African artists, and global film and media studio production sites as a study of locality and delocalization. He teaches a wide array of graduate and undergraduate courses; in Winter 2025, he will be teaching an undergraduate lecture course on Film Theory (FAMST 192FT).