Alongside my writing-based academic work has been a parallel practice within film and other media. Across all projects, I explore narrative innovation, cross-cultural exchange, and the interplay between theory and practice in contemporary cinema. 

Documentary & Cultural Work

Gallery 600 Julia’s Art Walk Artist Conversations

For years, Gallery 600 Julia has been part of the way I teach art history in New Orleans. The changing exhibitions in the gallery’s front room always bring a fresh perspective, but the gallery as a whole is an extraordinary treasure trove for looking at the many historical, social, and cultural ways we perceive life in New Orleans and throughout rural Louisiana. For years, my university students were the primary audience I brought into this conversation; now, through Gallery 600 Julia’s Art Walk Artist Conversations, I am taking that experience to a much wider platform.

I am producing the ongoing video series with Emmy Award-winning producer Eric Carle Jr., filming short conversations with the gallery’s featured artists about their work, their lives, their inspirations, and their relationships to New Orleans and Louisiana. One of the things that makes Gallery 600 Julia particularly special for this project is that it represents living artists who are actively making, thinking, exhibiting, and participating in the cultural life around them. We have the extraordinary opportunity not simply to document their work, but to sit down with the artists themselves and hear them speak about it. For me, the project brings together teaching, art history, filmmaking, and a deep affection for the cultural landscape of New Orleans and Louisiana. It is a labor of love, and I am excited to see where it takes us. 

The project is ongoing, with new artist conversations being added as the series develops.

Academic Work

Creative Work

As a writer and director of independent short films, I make brief, intense works that explore the boundaries of attraction vs. the grotesque, tracing the contours of the uncanny along the way. My two independent horror shorts, Club Dread and Audubon Dark, combine genre convention with experimental storytelling to provoke visceral as well as intellectual responses. Audubon Dark premiered in Venice in 2015 and screened internationally, including at the Monaco Charity Film Festival, while Club Dread was selected for Spasmofest 2025 in Modena. These films reflect my lifelong love affair with Italian cinema, indebted to Fellini, Sorrentino, Monicelli, and other greats, as well as my interest in how film can sculpt mood, subvert expectation, and probe the cultural dynamics of horror.