Bio

T. R. Merchant-Knudsen is an award-winning scholar and instructor of Moving Image Studies. Currently, they are a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) and Instructor at North Carolina State University in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, and an adjunct instructor at Wake Technical Community College. From 2017-2023, they acted as the Image Editor for Film International.

Merchant-Knudsen’s writings have been published in Animation Studies, En Media Res, Film International, Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, Cultural Intertexts, Film Matters, and more. They have two chapters—one on David Fincher and another on Mecha Anime—coming out in 2027. Additionally, they have presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, the Society for Animation Studies Conference, the National Communication Association Conference, the Popular Culture Association Conference, The Carolina Rhetoric Conference, Visions Film Festival and Conference, and others.

Their interests in film and media studies are on the histories of animation and moving image technologies, formalist analysis, visual rhetorics, media theory and methods, and intermedia sensory experiences of spectacular media environments.

In addition to scholarly pursuits, MK is an independent filmmaker specializing in flickering, animation, and documentary. They are also an independent musician working within the genres of ambient, metal, indie rock, and experimental.

Area(s) of Expertise

History of Animation and Moving Image Technologies, Formalist Analysis, Visual Rhetoric, Media Theory and Methods

Publications

• Parting Words: Viewing films one image at a time; or, remembering Hannah Frank (1984–2017) , Film International (2022)
• Painting a Collaborative Gaze , Film International (2021)
• “Filmed Love Letters: The Dialogism and Intertextuality of Lost in Translation and her” , Cultural Intertexts (2021)
• Uncomfortable Laughter: Revisiting Funny Games (1997) on Criterion , Film International (2020)
• “Lost Inside Empire”: Self-Orientalization in the Animation and Sounds of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises , Southeast Asian Review of English (2020)
• Through the Haze: Fidelity of Adaptation in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice , Language Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies (2019)
• Through the Haze: Fidelity of Adaptation in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice , Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies (2019)
• Reviews DVD/Blu-ray , Film Matters (2016)
• Reviews Film , Film Matters (2016)
• The Censorship of Art After Death: Looking at Stanley Kubrick’s History with Censorship , Film Matters (2015)

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