Dialogue with Jacqueline Stewart

Jacqueline Stewart is a film historian, author and archivist whose scholarship and public engagement work amplifies underrepresented voices in cinema. She is Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, and host of “Silent Sunday Nights” on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

From 2021 to 2024, Stewart served as Chief Artistic and Programming Officer and then Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. She founded the South Side Home Movie Project, a community-centered archival program housed at the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life that will celebrate its 20th year in 2025.

Stewart is the author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, and co-editor of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema and William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. In 2015, she co-curated the five-disc set Pioneers of African American Cinema for Kino Lorber.

Stewart is chair of the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), which advises the Librarian of Congress on the annual National Film Registry. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2023 Silver Light Award from the Association of Moving Image Archivists, and the 2024 Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018. Stewart earned her PhD in English from the University of Chicago and her BA in English from Stanford University.