• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Main Navigation
  • Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

Open Search
  • About
    • Facilities
      • Franklin Hall
        • Commons
        • Studios
          • Ken and Audrey Beckley Studio
          • Ed Spray Control Room
          • Studio 8
          • Studio 9
          • Studio 10
          • Studio 11
        • Production Labs
        • Game Design Facilities
        • Equipment Checkout
        • Student Media Suite
        • WIUX
        • Institute for Communication Research
        • Screening Room
      • Radio-TV
        • Studio 5
        • Equipment Checkout
        • Production Lab
        • Film Editing Room
        • Other Facilities
      • Using Facilities
    • Our History
    • Collections
    • Student Advisory Council
    • Diversity
    • Join Our Team
    • Strategic Plan
      • Strategic Priorities
      • Process
    • Governance/Tenure and Promotion Policies
    • Contact
      • General Inquiries
      • Report an Issue
      • Request Photos & Materials
  • Admissions
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Graduate Admissions
    • Cost, Aid & Scholarships
    • Visit Us
    • Request Information
  • Academics
    • Undergraduate Programs
      • BA in Journalism
        • News Reporting & Editing
        • Public Relations
        • Social and Digital Media
      • BA in Media
        • Cinema and Media Studies
        • Fashion Media
        • Film, Television and Digital Production
        • Interactive and Digital Media
        • Media Advertising
        • Media Management, Law and Policy
        • Media Science
        • Media Technologies, Games and Culture
        • Sports Media
      • BFA in Cinematic Arts
      • BS in Game Design
    • Graduate Programs
      • M.S. in Media
        • Data Journalism
        • Documentary/ Nonfiction Production
        • Journalism
        • Management
        • Strategic Communication
      • M.A. in Media Arts & Sciences
      • Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences
    • Minors & Certificates
    • Honors Programs
    • Courses
    • Precollege Programs
  • Research
    • Centers, Affiliates & Partners
    • Student Opportunities
  • Career Prep
    • For Employers
    • Career Possibilities
    • Internships
  • Student Experience
    • Travel Opportunities
    • Student Work Gallery
      • Gallery Archive
    • Student Organizations
    • Media Living Learning Center
  • People
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Staff Directory
    • Graduate Student Directory
    • Student Ambassador Directory
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
  • Current Students
    • Advising
      • Undergraduate Advising
      • Graduate Advising
    • Career Prep & Internships
      • Finding Internships & Jobs
      • Job Listings
      • Applying for Internship Courses
    • Get Involved
      • Managing and Creating Organizations
      • Peer Mentors
      • Student Ambassadors
      • Graduate Association
      • Honors Programs
      • Part-Time Jobs
    • Courses & Registration
    • Scholarships & Financial Aid
      • Undergraduate Scholarships
      • Graduate Scholarships
    • Student Support
    • Technology
      • Game Design Laptops
      • Connect2 Troubleshooting
      • Course Websites
      • Website Profiles
    • Travel Opportunities
  • Alumni & Giving
    • Giving to the School
    • Media School Alumni Board
      • Nominations
    • Distinguished Alumni Awards
    • Alumni Stories
    • Class Notes
    • Subscribe to the Newsletter
    • LA Council Members
    • Scholarship Directory

The Media School

  • Home
  • About
    • Facilities
    • Our History
    • Collections
    • Student Advisory Council
    • Diversity
    • Join Our Team
    • Strategic Plan
    • Governance/Tenure and Promotion Policies
    • Contact
  • Admissions
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Graduate Admissions
    • Cost, Aid & Scholarships
    • Visit Us
    • Request Information
  • Academics
    • Undergraduate Programs
    • Graduate Programs
    • Minors & Certificates
    • Honors Programs
    • Courses
    • Precollege Programs
  • Research
    • Centers, Affiliates & Partners
    • Student Opportunities
  • Career Prep
    • For Employers
    • Career Possibilities
    • Internships
  • Student Experience
    • Travel Opportunities
    • Student Work Gallery
    • Student Organizations
    • Media Living Learning Center
  • People
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Staff Directory
    • Graduate Student Directory
    • Student Ambassador Directory
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
  • Search
  • Current Students
  • Alumni & Giving
  • Home
  • People
  • Profile

Samuel Smucker

Ph.D. Candidate

Pronouns:
He/Him

Contact Information

Office:
Bloomington
Email:
sajsmuck@iu.edu

Research and Creative Interests

  • Melvin Van Peebles
  • Expatriate Cinema and Literature
  • American Film History
  • African American cinema
  • Media Theory
  • Aesthetics
  • Social Theory
  • screenwriting

Biography

Samuel Smucker’s dissertation, Expatriate Cinema: Melvin Van Peebles and the Black Radical Tradition, is a case study of the relationship between aesthetics and politics in transnational cinema. He examines Van Peebles’s expatriatism to illuminate the diasporic and Third-World influences and origins of contemporary African American cinema. Van Peebles’s transnational cinema in the context of Cedric Robinson’s Black Radical Tradition and “fugitive” aesthetics. He received a Chateaubriand Fellowship, which supported a semester-long residency in Paris to do archival research. His research interests include African-American and U.S. film history, media theory, and the political economy of media representation. At IU, he has taught Scriptwriting, Screening Race and Ethnicity, and From Harlem to Paris: Transnational Cinema and Culture.

PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Article

“Pivotal Encounters: Melvin Van Peebles, Amos Vogel, and the Beginnings of a Black Radical Cinema.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Vol. 64. No. 4. Forthcoming.

“A Black Radical Cinema before Sweetback: ‘Everyday Realism’ in Melvin Van Peebles’s Early Films.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2024.2426879

“A Wide Shot: Expanding the Frame on Melvin Van Peebles,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00037

“Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: The Correspondence of Melvin Van Peebles with Kermit Eby and June Greenlief,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00042

“‘He Felt Like He Could Be His True Self Here,’ Interview with Christian Thivat, Producer of La Permission / Story of a Three Day Pass,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.  https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00043

“‘That Was All Melvin!’ Interview with John B. Bennett, Producer of Watermelon Man,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00044

“Between Burlesque and Black Horror: Interview with Jean-Pierre Saire, Producer of Le Conte de Ventre Plien / Bellyful (2000),” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00045

“Melvin Van Peebles Bibliography 1957-1969,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.2979/blc.00048

“Moral Choices and Social Mobility in Lady Bird and The Graduation,” Film Criticism Journal, Volume 42, Issue 3, 2018.

Book Reviews

“Representations of Labor in Cinema: Skvirsky’s The Process Genre reveals that which was always there,” JumpCut 61. Summer 2022.

“News War Shapes Political Rhetoric Evolution: Sid Bedingfield’s Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965,” Gateway Journalism Review. Winter 2018.

Editing

Close-up Editor: “A Wide Shot: Expanding the Frame on Melvin Van Peebles,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal, forthcoming Fall 2024.

Translations

Samuel Smucker, Nathan Rabord, and Julie Le Hegarat, translators, “The Invincible Chester Himes” Interview with Melvin Van Peebles, France Observateur, February 20, 1964. 13-14. Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

Samuel Smucker, Nathan Rabord, and Julie Le Hegarat, translators, Melvin Van Peebles, “The Right to Be Ordinary” (1967), Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Vol. 16. No. 1, Fall 2024.

TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS

Invited

“Melvin Van Peebles’s Three Pick-Up Men for Herrick: Political Aesthetics and Transatlantic Film Distribution.” SEARCH Research Laboratory. University of Strasbourg. May 2023.

“Melvin Van Peebles and his French Years.” Le laboratoire 3L.AM – Langues, Littératures, Linguistique des Universités d’Angers et du Mans. February 2023.

Presentations

“Melvin Van Peebles at the Cinémathèque Algerienne: Transnational Cinema and International Solidarity.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Boston, MA, March 2024. Panelist.

“Funding and Organizing Your Research Abroad.” Media School Graduate Colloquium. Indiana University. September 2023. Department Talk.

“Legacy, the Archive, and an Account of Whiteness in Les Cinq Cent Balles.” Melvin Van Peebles Symposium. Ohio Wesleyan University. April 2023. Panelist.

“Melvin Van Peebles and the Two Avant-Grades: The Political Aesthetics of Distribution and Exhibition of Three Pick-Up Men for Herrick.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Conference Online. April 2022. Panel Organizer.

“Why No Genres? Industry Cycles in Films with Black Lead Actors in the 1970s.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Conference Online. March 2021. Panelist.

“From Steelworkers to Ironman: The Disappearing Working Class Hero in Wide Release Films.” Media School Colloquium. October 2020. Department Talk.

“Melvin Van Peebles’s Lumpenproletarian Folk Hero.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. (Accepted. Conference Cancelled). April 2020. Panelist.

“Le Baadasssss: Melvin Van Peebles and the French New Wave.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 2019. Panelist.

“The Meanings of Production: The Ideological Effects of Private Ownership.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 2019. Seminar Participant.

“The Guy Who Knows What He’s Talking About: Melvin Van Peebles in France.” Film and History Conference. Madison, WI. November 2018. Panelist.

“Union Organizing among Film and Television Production Workers in Los Angeles.” Union for Democratic Communications Conference. Chicago, IL. May 2018. Panelist.

“Expanded Time: Time-Setting Variation in Wide Release Films in the U.S.” Popular Culture Conference, Indianapolis, IN. March 2018. Chair.

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Fellow, Institute for Critical Inquiry, 2024 Seminar: Reading Marx’s Grundrisse with David Harvey, New School for Social Research, June 2024.

Summer Cushman Memorial Fellowship, The Media School, Indiana University. Spring 2024.

The Hawkins Cinema and Media Studies Fellowship, The Media School, Indiana University. Fall 2023.

Chateaubriand Fellowship. French Embassy in the United States. Service de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle. Spring 2023.

Graduate and Professional School Government Research Award, Indiana University. Fall 2023.

Center for Research for Race and Ethnicity in Society Graduate Student Research Award. Indiana University. Spring 2022.

Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant. Office of the Vice-Provost for Research, Indiana University. Summer 2021.

Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant. Black Camera: An International Film Journal. Summer 2021.

Related News

  • Graduate students awarded for their achievements
  • Fall 2024 Black Camera issue features Close-Ups on Blaxploitation and Van Peebles’ creative breadth
  • 2 articles by Smucker to be published spring 2025
  • Graduate students present research and films during Common Ground conference
  • Media School faculty, students to present at SCMS conference
  • Leadership
  • Faculty Directory
  • Staff Directory
  • Graduate Student Directory
  • Student Ambassador Directory

The Media School social media channels

  • Faculty & Staff Intranet
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Indiana University

Accessibility | College Scorecard | Privacy Notice | Copyright © 2025 The Trustees of Indiana University