MDOCS Faculty
MDOCS draws from Skidmore's faculty and staff along with documentary practitioners to deliver courses in documentary traditions, theory and methods. Spring 2020 Faculty are listed below...
Julie Casper Roth is a documentary filmmaker and storyteller interested in the unseen and ignored.
Her work has been screened nationally and internationally at film festivals, on television,
and in galleries. She's a two-time finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, a
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Video, and a recipient of the College Art
Association's Professional Development Award. She's a graduate of Smith College and
holds an MFA from the University at Albany. (Fa19 courses: Documentary Storytelling;
Doc Film Prod: Form and Content)
Jordana Dym is Professor of History with research and teaching interests including Latin America,
the history of cartography, book history and public history. She joined the Skidmore
faculty in 2000 after undergraduate studies in History that took her to Russia and
France, a stint in the Foreign Service that expanded her horizons to Central America
and North Africa, and graduate studies at New York University. She teaches a Latin
American survey, regional courses on Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico, and
topics courses on the history of travel and travel writing, war and peace, maps, and
publics. Engaging with written, visual and aural sources, her classes encourage students
to present findings in papers, newspaper article, sound stories, websites and exhibits.
She supervises International Affairs majors, offers a first-year seminar on maps in
the world, and enjoys sharing her love of travel with students on campus and on travel
programs in France, Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala and Puerto Rico. She directs the Latin
American Studies minor program, and was the inaugural director of the John B. Moore
Documentary Studies Collaborative (MDOCS) (2014-2018), developing the DocLab, Skidmore-Saratoga
Memory Project and Storytellers' Institute. (Fa19 DS course: Oral History)
Sarah Friedland received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and the International School of Film and Television in Cuba and her M.F.A. from the Integrated Media Art Program at Hunter College. Her documentary films and installations are concerned with personal stories that reveal larger histories and intricacies about place and society. Friedland’s works with Esy Casey have screened widely in the U.S. and abroad and have been supported by grants from the Jerome Foundation, Paul Newman Foundation, William H. Prusoff Foundation, Princess Grace Foundation, Ford Foundation and Center for Asian American Media. See full bio.
Olivia McKee is a performing artist based in Troy, NY, and a core organizer of Albany's CapCity Slam. As a lifelong poet, musician, and dancer, she is passionate about the ways art and somatic healing can improve our lives-- the body as both a site of trauma, change, and our greatest joys. She currently works at the Art Center of the Capital Region as a movement instructor for autistic adults. In the past two years her poetry has established her as both a National Poetry Slam Team Piece Finalist and a Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam Finalist. Her work is published or forthcoming in/on Write About Now!, A Whore's Manifesto, and Winter Tangerine.
Catherine Tatge is an Emmy award-winning producer and director of film and television and the CEO/Co-Founder
of Tatge/Lasseur Productions and the not-for-profit, Global Village Media and the
Civic Life Project. She has produced national programs for PBS, CBS and Europe’s ARTE for more than
thirty years. Her diverse body of work covers a wide spectrum of topics and themes:
biographical portraits, music, performance and dance, and documentary films on the
world of ideas and the human condition – including films on myth, love and hate, domestic
violence and sex trafficking, faith in the modern world, and the meaning of modern
art.
She has received numerous awards including Emmys, Columbia DuPont, Humanitas Prize, Cine Gold Eagles, several Golden Hugos, Gracie Award, and Aurora Awards. See full bio.
Ron Taylor is a filmmaker and photographer who has worked in the commercial film and documentary
industry with many different production houses, including the Maysles in New York
City. A graduate of and former teaching assistant at Syracuse University's Newhouse
TV and film program, Ron's work includes commercial films and short films appearing
in various festivals and gallery shows. Galleries and festivals in New York include
Cheim & Read, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., CRG Gallery, Upstate Independents, Lake Placid
Film Festival and Tribecca Film Festival. For a number of years he taught digital
filmmaking in the Skidmore Summer Art Program and is currently with Media Services.
Adam Tinklecreates, teaches and writes about music, sound, media and performance. At the center
of Adam's work are strategies for artistic engagement, interactivity and pedagogy
that draw on experimental music. In 2010, he co-founded the Universal Language Orchestra,
a group of elementary-aged novice musicians that composed, improvised and built their
own instruments. He subsequently created several similarly path-breaking arts education
programs across San Diego County, where his collaborations with his students and his
audience-participatory works were shown at the Birch Aquarium, Museum of Contemporary
Art San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, Old Globe Theatre and Institute of Perception.
See full bio.
Marc Woodworth is the associate editor of Salmagundi Magazine, assistant director of the New York
State Summer Writers Institute and author of a book of poems titled Arcade. His other
books include Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand, a volume in the 33 1/3 series on seminal
albums, and Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters. How To Write About Music, a textbook and
anthology he co-edited, was recently published by Bloomsbury. He teaches in the English
Department and for the MDOCs Program at Skidmore College.
