Michael Anthony Turcios, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Screen Cultures Program in the Department of Radio/Television/Film. He also holds affiliations with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research and the Latina and Latino Studies Program. He also regularly teaches and mentors incarcerated students in the Northwestern Prison Education Program.
Professor Turcios is a specialist of antiracist, anticolonial, and radical film and media histories of the urban margins in the Global North and the Global South. His first book in progress, Relational Insurgent Medias, is a study of Chicana/o Los Angeles and Algerian Paris media activism during the 1970s. His archival research on the understudied nontraditional media of both communities shows that the social and racial justice projects enabled both communities to make parallel antiracist and anticolonial critiques. Chicanas/os and Algerians mobilized their causes through nontheatrical film production, community film screenings organized in nontheatrical spaces, and the production and distribution of community-based print media. Professor Turcios is at work on a second book project on the dispersed media archives that deal with themes of Indigenous identity, land rights and ownership, self-determination, and inter/national decolonization in Palestine, Chiapas, and the Chagos archipelago.
Committed to diversity, equity, and social justice, Professor Turcios works with all students, especially first-generation and racialized students from working-class backgrounds. His research appears in journals such as Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Afterimage, Kalfou, Black Camera, Film Criticism, and French Screen Studies.
Education
PhD, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Southern California
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Research Articles
- “The Re-emergence of Palestine Vaincra, A Legacy of Palestinian France,” French Screen Studies (Fall 2026).
- “The Concealment of Human Rights Abuse in Videos of the United States Customs and Border Protection,” Film Criticism 49.1 (June 2025), online.
- “A Reparative Reading of the Atlantic Ocean in Moonlight,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 16.2 (Spring 2025): 69-88.
- “A Visual Culture History of Chicane/Latine Solidarity with Palestine,” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies 11.1 (Spring 2024): 7-31.
- “Metaphors of Extractive Capitalism and Fabulation in Nope,” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 51.1 (March 2024): 27-46.
- “Decolonial Expressions in Non-theatrical Films of 1970s East Los Angeles,” Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 19.1 (Fall 2022): 19-34.
Critical Essays
- “Tijuana Ayisyen in Documentary Cinema,” Intervenxions, Volume 5.
- “On Disciplinary Insubordination: Notes on Praxis,” Ethnic Studies Review 49 (2-3): 92-104.
- “Refugee Agency” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies. Edited by Yến Lê Espiritu, 566-569. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2025.
- “Gaza on Screen, edited by Nadia Yaqub,” Film Quarterly 78.3 (Spring 2025): 96-98.
Courses
Graduate Seminars
- Comparative Research Methods
- Nonextant Film and Media
- Foundations in Screen Cultures
Undergraduate Courses
- Palestinian Cinema (undergraduate and graduate)
- Genres: Nontheatrical Film and Media (Northwestern Prison Education Program)
- Analyzing Media Texts
- Communication Foundation
- Documentary Film History and Criticism
- Indigenous Studies and the Moving Image (Northwestern Prison Education Program)
- Cinema of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean
- Third World Cinemas (Northwestern Prison Education Program)
- Film, Media, and Liberation Movements
- Race and Space in Film and Media (Northwestern Prison Education Program)