Jef Burnham serves as an instructor at DePaul University’s College of Communication as well as the College of Computing and Digital Media. His research interests include film and television, video games, popular culture, fan communities, and new media, and he has taught courses/lectured on Marvel movies, media ethics, cult cinema, and the works of filmmakers Robert Altman and David Cronenberg.
Jef is the author of “The Primetime Heroics of Small Screen Avengers: Finding Sociopolitical Value in Marvel TV Movies,” featured in McFarland & Co.’s Marvel Comics into Film: Essays on Adaptations since the 1940s (2016). He has also co-authored essays featured in Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Scarecrow Press, 2013), Remake Television: Reboot, Reuse, Recycle (Lexington Books, 2014) and Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies (Routledge, forthcoming), and contributed a chapter to Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy (Open Court, 2011).
His life outside of academia has found him co-hosting the CadaverCast podcast with his son, Alistair, and working in media criticism as well as film, most recently serving as Assistant Director on Jason Coffman’s feature-length horror-comedy, Housesitters (2017). Jef holds a BA in Film and Video from Columbia College Chicago and an MA in Media and Cinema Studies from DePaul University.
Selected Publications- “The Primetime Heroics of Small Screen Avengers: Finding Sociopolitical Value in Marvel TV Movies.” Marvel Comics into Film: Essays on Adaptations since the 1940s (Eds. Matthew J. McEniry, Robert Moses Peaslee & Robert G. Weiner) (McFarland and Company, 2016)
- With Blair Davis. “Screening Truths: Rashomon and Cinematic Negotiation.” Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies (Eds. Blair Davis, Robert Anderson, & Jan Walls) (Routledge, 2015)
- With Paul Booth. “Who Are We? Re-Envisioning the Doctor in the 21st Century.” Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle(Ed. Carlen Lavigne) (Lexington Books, 2014)
- With Joshua Paul Ewalt. “Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the Restricted Universe of Popular Culture Production.” Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Ed. Shelley S. Rees) (Scarecrow Press, 2013)
- “A Study in Simulacra.” Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy (Ed. Josef Steiff) (Open Court Publishing Company, 2011)