Biography

Anthony Silvestri is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Media School at Indiana University. His research focuses on the archival practice of members of the post-war American avant-garde movement. Currently, he is researching the Kenneth Anger Mixed Media Collections, amassed by the filmmaker over a period of seven decades in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington. He is also interested in the Andy Warhol Time Capsules, housed at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Additionally, he has done some examination of the Kenneth Anger clippings at the Museum of Death in Los Angeles. Broadly, these collections touch upon issues surrounding the history of and historicization of sexuality, queer media, archival institutions, autobiographical archiving, experimental media and pornography.

Anthony is a recipient of the Kinsey Institute’s 2019 John Money Fellowship for Scholars of Sexology. He currently serves as the graduate student representative for the Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). Anthony has been awarded the Media School’s 2018 award for Best Graduate Research Paper in recognition of his essay Kenneth Anger and the Filmed Archive Reenactment. He has presented his work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Annual Conference and Visible Evidence. He is a co-programmer of the Underground Film Series at I.U. Cinema, which will be screening his program The Spiritual Avant-Garde this fall. 

Anthony received his M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2015, and his B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014.

Courses Taught as Instructor of Record

MSCH-A 315: Advertising and Consumer Culture

MSCH-F 375: Race, Gender and Representation in Media

MSCH-P 331: Script Writing