Vera Dika

Vera Dika holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and has taught at UCLA, USC and NYU. She is currently Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New Jersey City University.  Specializing in 1970s and 1980s mainstream and avant-garde film, and their relationship to the present, Dika is the author of three books, The (Moving) Pictures Generation: New York Downtown Film and Art (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: the Uses of Nostalgia (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Games of Terror: Halloween and the Films of the Stalker Cycle 1978-1983 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991). Professor Dika has written film criticism for such publications as Art in America, Artforum, Millennium Film Journal, Film Reader, Jump Cut, and The Los Angeles Times.

Dika’s critical writings also appear in a number of anthologies and include “Between Nostalgia and Regret: Strategies of Historical Disruption from Douglas Sirk to Mad Men” in Hollywood and the American Historical Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather” in The Godfather Trilogy (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Dika is a founding editor of Millennium Film Journal, and is currently an Associate Member of the Columbia University Film Seminar.

As an internationally recognized scholar, Dika has been invited to speak at universities, art institutions, and conferences. These include the INHA: institut national d’historie de l’art in Paris, the University of Trento in Italy, and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.  In New York City, professor Dika has spoken at Anthology Film Archives, John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute, and the Columbia Film Seminar, and in Newark, New Jersey, at the Jewish Museum.  She has also guest curated shows at the REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Walker Art Center.  Her current research interests include film making in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s, and contemporary experimental film.

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