Miranda Banks, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor

213.740.3334
mbanks@cinema.usc.edu
LUC 405

Miranda Banks teaches courses on television history and theory in the Division of Critical Studies. Her current manuscript, The XX Factor: Gendered Labor in Production Cultures, explores the conditions and economics of gendered labor in film and television production. Banks worked in programming at the American Cinematheque, and last summer she curated the Hammer Museum’s film series, “The Female of the Species: Screen Sirens of the 1920s.” She has written for The Journal of Popular Film and Television; Refractory; and Flow, and for the anthologies Teen Television and Garb: A Reader on Fashion and Culture. She is currently co-editing the anthology, Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Film, Television, and Visual Media Work Worlds with Professors John Caldwell (UCLA) and Vicki Mayer (Tulane). She received her B.A. at Stanford University in English and Humanities and her Ph.D. from the UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media.

Banks' current research with co-investigator Professor Ellen Seiter studies current creative/craft guild negotiations in Hollywood and labor struggles around digital media, jurisdiction, residuals, and online content. Digital content creation has shaken the media industries by providing new distribution outlets for creative work and a demand for new skill sets among creative workers, something that has exacerbated Hollywood’s favoritism of the young. This research is based on survey data and interviews with film school students, on the one hand, and working writers, camera operators and directors, on the other, comparing individuals at different stages of their careers in terms of their understanding of the labor economies of film/tv vs. new media production, and the desirability of professional unions. The digital divide as it separates creative workers along generational lines is a matter not merely of ability and innovation with new technologies, but also a matter of experiences in the labor market and whether the model of “entrepreneurial labor” common to the web, online video, and video gaming, threatens decades of union struggles in the creative industries in the United States. The Hollywood strikes of 2007 form a background for research into what young aspirants to these industries understand about labor market forces, compared to their elders.