Staff

Ross Melnick is Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Interim Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center. He was named an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for his book, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022), which was awarded the 2024 Culbert Family Book Prize from the International Association for Media and History and the 2023 Richard Wall Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association. He is the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012)—recipient of the 2013 “Book of the Year” award from the Theatre Historical Society of America—co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004), inspired by the website (cinematreasures.org) he co-founded 25 years ago. His research has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, The Moving Image, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and in numerous other journals and edited collections on film exhibition, media industries, silent cinema, broadcasting history, and film music.

Due to his research on film exhibition and media industry history, he has been interviewed for numerous documentaries and podcasts and by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, BBC, NPR, A&E, CBS News Sunday Morning, The History Channel, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Boxoffice, The Hollywood Reporter, CNN Business, Bloomberg CityLab, Business Insider, and more. Melnick has also served as a museum curator, in theatrical motion picture marketing and distribution, and in business development and marketing for several tech start-ups. He is currently serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.