Eli Finnegan, PhD, M.F.A

Eli Finnegan is a filmmaker, painter mixed-media artist, musician, and writer. They were trained as a classical pianist as well as studying art history and physics; they began making short films and working in the film industry while in graduate school at NYU, subsequently leaving academia to pursue filmmaking. Eventually, they returned to academic life and are always looking for ways for their scholarship and their creative endeavors to intersect. Their area of literary expertise is the literature and culture of the American South, in particular the work of Flannery O’Connor. In the area of film and media studies, their scholarship is grounded in feminist, queer, and gender studies, as well as in epistemology, particularly epistemological justice. They have published articles and book chapters on film, literature, and television; their scholarship explores questions of knowledge, representation, and the intersections of language, body, image, and ethics. Their films and paintings have been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally and have won awards at festivals in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Their films and writing combine narrative, experimental, and documentary forms to tell stories that seek to expand what narrative is and what it does. Finnegan teaches courses in film and media studies; consciousness studies; visual studies; literature, creative writing, social justice writing, and body/disability studies. Furthermore, Finnegan has worked professionally as a gaffer and cinematographer on feature films, short films, music videos, commercials, and documentaries since 1989 and continues to work on local projects when time permits.

• Ph.D in English, University at Buffalo, 2010
• M.F.A. in Media Study (Film), University at Buffalo, 2000
• M.A. in Art History, The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, 1989
• Double-Degree (B.A. and B.M) in Art History and Music Performance (Piano), respectively, Oberlin College, 1987

• 2023 Winner, Best Experimental Film. Madonie Film Festival, Madonie, Italy.
• 2023 Fellow, Folger Shakespeare Institute
• 2022 Second place, Short Film Screenplay, ScreenCraft Screenwriting Competition
• 2022 Words Matter Award for Best in Show in Mixed Media. The Next Extinction. The Mattress Factory Contemporary Art Space, Pittsburgh, PA.
• 2022 Nominated, Best Short Film. Highkey Film Festival, Boulder, CO.
• 2021 Best Experimental Film. Milan Film Festival, Italy.
• 2021 Special Jury Prize, Short Film Category. Vail Film Fest.
• 2021 Special Jury Award. Between the Shadow and the Act. InLiquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
• 2021  Faculty Member of the Year Award, D’Youville Department of Humanities
• 2021 Finalist, Vail Film Festival Screenplay Competition
• 2021 Writer in Residence, Franconia Sculpture Park, MN
• 2020 Screenwriting Fellow, New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA)
• 2020 Best Cinematography, Experimental category. Wildfest NOLA.
• 2019 Tracy Kennard Emerging Writer Award for Screenwriting
• 2019 Artist in Residence, Spruceton Inn Art Center
• 2018 Best Cinematography, Short film category. Aspen Shortsfest.
• 2017 AAUP Scholar of the Year Award
• 2017 Faculty Council Marilyn Bell Research Fellowship
• 2017 Artist in Residence, Ontario Council of the Arts
• 2016 Summer Research Fellow, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University
• 2016  Best of Buffalo, Film & Video Category, Squeaky Wheel at 30 Festival and Celebration
• 2015 Faculty Member of the Year Award, D'Youville Department of Liberal Arts
• 2012 NEH Summer Scholar. “Stakes of Speech: Self-Revelation and Theatricality/A Summer Seminar on Wittgenstein in the Spirit of Cavell and Rhees.” Lehigh University.

Cinema Studies, Media Studies, and Film Production; Gender, Feminist, & Queer Studies; Disability and Body Studies;19th-20th century literature and culture of the American South; Ordinary Language Philosophy and Linguistic Justice; Epistemology & Epistemological Justice; Consciousness Studies; Science and Neuroscience in Film and Literature; American Modernism. 

Furthermore, Finnegan is routinely engaged in writing fiction and poetry, screenwriting, filmmaking, painting, and mixed-media installation projects. Since 2019, they have focused more on  these areas of creative production than on traditional scholarship. Currently, they are writing a novel inspired by Aeschylus’s Oresteia and a scholarly manuscript on technology in Flannery O’Connor.
 

• 2018 “Narrating Gender, Gendering Narrative, and Engendering Wittgenstein’s Rough Ground in Westworld.” Westworld and Philosophy: If You Go Looking for the Truth, Get the Whole Thing. Edited by Kimberly S. Engels and James B. South. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., pp. 150-161.
• 2018 “How Gone with the Wind Ruined My Life.” Southern Quarterly 55.3-4, A Special Issue on Gone with the Wind (Winter and Spring): 232-258.
• 2018. Nadja. 16mm and video experimental narrative film.
• 2018 “Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Poetics—and Politics—of Memory.” The Public (March 21-27)
• 2013 “Listening for Stories, Conjuring Ghosts: Meg Knowles and the Mystery of Knowing.” Meg Knowles: Short Stories. Haberman Gacioch Center for Visual and Performing Arts Exhibition Catalogue. Buffalo, NY: Daemen College. 
• 2011 “(Still) Fighting the Power: Public Space and the Unspeakable Privacy of the Other in Do the Right Thing.” The Philosophy of Spike Lee. Ed. Mark Conrad. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 75-94.