Dr. Katie Bird joins the department of Communications as an assistant professor in film studies and digital media production. Before moving to El Paso, she taught filmmaking and film and media studies at the University of Pittsburgh where she also received her PhD in 2018. Her research focuses on the discourse of film technicians working in the Hollywood studio system. Her current book project, "Embodied Hollywood: How Craft Workers Made Their Labor Matter to the Movies, 1919–1985 ," explores how practitioners like cinematographers, grips, electricians, editors, and Steadicam operators have described their manual labor in promoting their craft and negotiating industry politics. Her next projects focus on women camera and Steadicam operators working in North America in the 1970s-1990s, and the history of automated technologies in film and video production. She has authored articles and video essays on the history of Steadicam technology, the American Cinema Editors organization, and German mountaineering cinematographers. Dr. Bird utilizes her background in filmmaking (B.A. Film Production, Loyola Marymount University, 2007) an M.A. in Literary and Cultural Studies (Carnegie Mellon University, 2010) and her experience teaching multi-modal digital composition courses to teach hybrid creative and research projects in her film studies and digital media courses.