Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Awards Chatter with Scott Feinberg
- Tuesday, March 3, 2026 / 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- With Scott Feinberg (Executive Editor of Awards, The Hollywood Reporter)
As awards season reaches its suspenseful homestretch before the 98th Academy Awards, the Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to welcome Scott Feinberg, Executive Editor of Awards for The Hollywood Reporter, for a timely and illuminating public discussion that pulls back the curtain on how Oscar races are really won. Feinberg is the author of the “Feinberg Forecast” column and the creator and host of the Awards Chatter podcast. In conversation with Carsey-Wolf Center Interim Director Ross Melnick, Feinberg will guide audiences through the current awards season and the leading hopefuls for the upcoming Oscars, breaking down what to expect, the major rivalries, and the potential upsets. He will offer an insider’s look at heated races in the Best Picture and Directing categories, and the constantly shifting predictions across the acting contenders. Drawing on extensive interviews with nominated talent, deep reporting on the campaign trail, and rigorous analysis of critics’ prizes and guild awards, Feinberg will explain how his projections take shape and what they reveal about this year’s Oscars race, offering film fans and industry watchers alike a chance to understand the forces shaping Hollywood’s biggest night.
Scott Feinberg (Executive Editor of Awards, The Hollywood Reporter) will join moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a comprehensive discussion of this year’s awards season and the race for the 98th Academy Awards.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Scott Feinberg (Executive Editor of Awards, The Hollywood Reporter)
Scott Feinberg is The Hollywood Reporter’s executive editor of awards coverage. He has worked at THR since 2011, having previously covered awards for the Los Angeles Times beginning in 2008. He is best known for the “Feinberg Forecast,” his regular assessment of the standings of various showbiz awards races, and for Awards Chatter, the interview-centric podcast for which he has conducted career-retrospective interviews with more than 600 of showbiz’s biggest names over the past decade. Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, and an alumnus of Brandeis University, he is also a trustee professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and a voting member of the Critics Choice Association.
Moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
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). He is the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004). 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.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.