MDOCS Faculty
MDOCS draws from Skidmore's faculty and staff along with documentary practitioners to deliver courses in documentary traditions, theory and methods.
Cecilia Aldarondo (MDOCS/English): Documentary film
Cecilia Aldarondo obtained her M.A. in contemporary art theory from Goldsmiths College
and her Ph.D. in comparative studies in discourse and society from the University
of Minnesota. Her personal documentary Memories of a Penitent Heart has been supported by grants and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Sundance
Institute, Time Warner Foundation, Firelight Media and the National Association of
Latino Independent Producers. In 2015 Memories was selected for IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs as well as Sundance Institute’s
Edit and Story Lab. She recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Film
Studies at Skidmore College and has been named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of 2015’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
Ian Berry (Dayton Director, Tang Teaching Museum): Gallery curation and museum exhibition
Ian Berry is Dayton Director of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore
College. Berry has organized more than 90 museum exhibitions, including interdisciplinary
collaborations on subjects from the Hudson River to Shaker furniture, and monographic
exhibitions with artists such as Terry Adkins, Nicole Eisenman, Nancy Grossman, Jim
Hodges, Nina Katchadourian, Corita Kent, Nicholas Krushenick, Shahzia Sikander, Amy
Sillman, Fred Tomaselli and Kara Walker.
Berry received his M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in 1998 and served as assistant curator at the Williams College Museum of Art before coming to Skidmore in 2000. In his role as professor of liberal arts, he teaches the art history seminar "Inside the Museum" and is a frequent guest speaker for a wide variety of academic departments. Berry is also the author and editor of many volumes devoted to contemporary art practice.
From 2006 to 2012 Berry served as consulting director of the Emerson Gallery at Hamilton College and in 2009–10 was the Roy Acuff Chair of Excellence in the Creative Arts at Austin Peay University. He serves on the Saratoga Springs Arts Commission, has chaired the Visual Arts Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts and serves on several advisory committees for regional and national arts organizations.
Nicole Coady: Screenwriting
With more than 20 years of screenwriting experience, Nicole Coady has written for
such companies as MTV, 
New Line Cinema and 20th Century Fox. In addition, she authored two video games for
the top-selling toy company MGA. Currently she is in preproduction on the feature
film The Twelve Dancing Princesses. She is very excited to pass on her years of industry knowledge on how to write successfully
for the screen.
Jordana Dym (History): Principles of documentary and archival storytelling
Jordana Dym is the inaugural director of MDOCS and the Storytellers' Institute (2015–16) and
a professor of history whose research and teaching interests include Latin America,
the history of cartography and public history, with an interest in archival storytelling.
She has organized archive-based exhibits and websites working with student collaborators,
including an exhibit of declarations of independence in Mexico's national archives
(2010) and a Saratoga Springs map exhibit in partnership with the Saratoga Springs History Museum, Public Library and City Historian's
Office (2015). In addition to spearheading a public history initiative in Skidmore's
History Department, she shepherded the creation of the Latin American Studies Minor
program (2002, director 2007–11) and helped organize the 2004 Skidmore-Saratoga Springs
Film Forum Haiti film festival, which hosted leading writers and filmmakers on campus.
Her publications include From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State and Federation in Central
America, 1759–1839 (2006), an exhibit catalog, Declarando Independencias (Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico, 2010) and five edited volumes, including Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader (with K. Offen, 2011) and organized a 2012 virtual "cartographic conversation" for the John Carter Brown Library (2012). A recipient of several major research
grants, including from the NEH (2003–04) and John Carter Brown Library (2012), she
spent 2013–14 as a Humanities Writ Large Fellow at Duke University, working on The World Displayed: Western Travelers' Cartography, 1450–1930 and exploring digital humanities and documentary studies initiatives.
Sarah Friedland (Storytellers' Institute Director, MDOCS): Documentary film and installation
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. In 2009, after the debut of her feature documentary Thing With No Name, she was named one of the “Top 10 Independent Filmmakers to Watch” by Independent Magazine. She is a recipient of the 2014 Paul Robeson award from the Newark Museum for her
feature documentary The Rink, which is slated to air on PBS (WNET/NJTV) in fall 2016. Her recent documentary Jeepney (2015), which she produced with its director Esy Casey, was broadcast on PBS (World
Channel). She is currently co-directing the feature documentary Lyd in Exile with Rami Younis. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Center of
Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, LABA House of Study, MacDowell Colony and Meerkat Media.
Paul Hembree: Interactive media and experimental music
Paul Hembree is active as a composer, creative technologist and educator, working
in the borderlands between experimental music and interactive media. His recent projects
include the score and sound design for Goodnight Traffic City (2017), a game by developer Loren Schmidt and artist Kia Labeija, and Cerebral Hyphomycosis (2016), a duo for real and virtual cellists, premiered by T.J. Borden. His audiovisual
improvisation environment, Apocryphal Chrysopoeia (2016), was featured at National Sawdust on the 2016 New York City Electroacoustic
Music Festival as part of the New York Philharmonic's biennial celebrations. As a
computer musician he has collaborated with many prominent performers of new music,
including the JACK Quartet, Irvine Arditti, the International Contemporary Ensemble,
Ensemble Signal, and the Callithumpian Consort, on compositions by Pauline Oliveros,
Brian Ferneyhough, Kaija Saariaho and Roger Reynolds, among others. He has a Ph.D. in music, specializing in composition and computer music, from the University
of California.
Vickie Riley (Videography and Digital Resources, Communications): Filmmaking
Vickie Riley is a storyteller at heart. An Emmy-nominated producer, she found her
way to filmmaking through photography, where she was inspired to put sound to visual
imagery. She has been making films ever since. After receiving her master's degree
in film and video from Columbia College in Chicago, she began her career editing in
Chicago's advertising industry. She was soon producing and directing award-winning
documentaries for television. A part of the Skidmore Office of Communications and
Marketing, Vickie currently has the pleasure of producing videos telling Skidmore's
story.
Ron Taylor (Operations Coordinator, Media Services): Film and Photography
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 Tinkle (MDOCS/Media & Film Studies): Audio documentary and sound creation
Adam Tinkle creates, 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. Before moving to Skidmore in 2014 he was a founding broadcaster on
KNSJ 89.1 FM, San Diego's first community radio station, where he led community workshops
on radio-making and produced a weekly crowdsourced music and documentary program.
His award-winning solo performance A Mess of Things merges radio documentary with songs and video art. In May 2014 his interactive sound
sculpture the Shantytown Scrapblaster was permanently installed at the Media Arts Center San Diego. For More: www.riskyforager.com, www.adamtinkle.com
Marc Woodworth (MDOCS/English):Writing and interview
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.
