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After a lifelong love of art and media, I wanted to be able to study it while keeping my creative space separate from my academic one. There's limited resources for production at Reed, so I'm able to easily focus on analysis and theory for a wide variety of media! I'm primarily interested in online community, fan cultures, and the ways that digital identity has changed our experiences, along with how media can help communicate experiences and help us heal from them.

I chose to major in Film and Media Studies because of the way art and community coalesce. Film, as a medium, is in conversation with photography, painting, and theatre. Film projects bring together multi-talented individuals, and through this collaboration, a single work can showcase many artistic elements. The communal effort to create and share a film in the hope of reaching viewers—and perhaps even impacting them for the better—is what makes the art form so powerful. Whether it sparks empathy, challenges perspectives, or simply brings joy, film has the ability to connect people across different backgrounds. This shared experience fosters dialogue and understanding, reinforcing my passion for studying film not just as an art form but as a means of storytelling that shapes culture and unites communities. My research interests in Film and Media Studies include queer cinema, wardrobe, fashion, and styling.

I didn't really plan on it at all, but I had my first advisor meeting with Jake Fraser during orientation week where he told me the program was in the works and so it was always in the back of my mind. In my sophomore year I decided to stop thinking about requirements and just register for whatever sounded interesting to me, and I ended up taking five FMS classes. I realized pretty quickly that there was nothing else I was going to be as passionate about as this, and decided to take the plunge. Experiential narrative and agency in games, sports media and narratives, autoreflexive and metafiction films.

I have always loved film and editing, and after studying mathematics for a few years, I really wanted to be able to explore my creative side in my thesis. The major was introduced just in time for me to do so, and I switched! I am interested in queer cinema, with a particular focus on lesbian experimental film and documentary. I’m especially drawn to the ways documentary can center marginalized voices and call attention to intimacy, care, and unheard stories. Ultimately, I hope to pursue a career in documentary filmmaking that engages with these themes.

My thesis investigates ethics of care and queer representation in documentary cinema by analyzing Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (2023) and Portrait of Jason (1967) alongside my own short documentary about my great-uncle, a queer Filipino immigrant and performer. Through close textual analysis and creative practice, I explore how intergenerational relationships, racialized and gendered performance, and acts of looking complicate questions of intimacy, authorship, and care in documentary filmmaking.