William Whittington

William Whittington is the author of SOUND DESIGN AND SCIENCE FICTION (University of Texas Press, 2007). From 2002 to 2024, he held the position of Assistant Chair of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinematic Arts. He has conducted research and taught courses in film and television history, genre studies, film and Buddhism, audio culture, digital culture, photography, and adaptation. Between 1993-1997, he served as the curator of the USC Warner Bros. Archives, assisting with research for various film restorations, documentaries, and books. He has also worked as a book editor for Time Warner Trade Publishing and served as the managing editor of SPECTATOR, the USC Cinema & Media Studies Journal of Film and Television Criticism, for over two decades. His scholarly work includes articles and interviews on genre, sound, museums, new media and technology. His chapter on “Cinema Technology” appears in the 5th edition of Routledge’s INTRODUCTION TO FILM, and he has published chapters on digital aesthetics, sound and technology in various anthologies by Oxford University Press. Most recently, he served as a consultant for the award-winning documentary MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND (2019), which has shown in theaters and on PBS.