Associate Professor of Cinema Jennifer Hammett recently was named assistant dean for the College of Liberal & Creative Arts, a part-time position created to provide support for internship classes, study-abroad programs and the training of graduate assistants.
Hammett is charged with developing and leading a College-wide effort to expand cost-effective summer internship opportunities for students across the college. She will also review study-abroad challenges and opportunities and create a forum for faculty to share their experiences, syllabi, expertise and best practices regarding the training of graduate teaching assistants. Hammett will continue to lead internship, thesis and independent study courses in the School of Cinema.
“Professor Hammett will help create more and stronger opportunities for students to engage in vital, career-making experiences, in internship courses, in study-abroad programs or as teaching assistants,” says Daniel Bernardi, interim dean of the College of Liberal & Creative Arts. “Throughout her tenure, she has excelled in developing and supervising internships and in mentoring graduate student instructors.”
Hammett’s office will be in Humanities 116, which will be converted to a faculty support center with breakout writing rooms and meeting spaces.
Hammett taught for three years in the cinema studies program at University of Iowa before returning to the Bay Area in 1995 to pursue her goal of teaching at San Francisco State University. Since then, her research interests have expanded to include women filmmakers, U.S. cinema and culture of the 1950s and the structure of short narrative films. Her curated exhibit of posters from films directed by women is installed on the second floor of the Fine Arts Building. She is completing a book tentatively titled Short Narrative Films: Their Structure and Affect.
Hammett directed an award-winning short documentary,habits of faith, about an 86-year-old woman printmaker. It was an official selection at the Mill Valley Film Festival and won the First Place Documentary Award at the 27th Athens International Film and Video Festival, Best Documentary Award at the Valleyfest Film Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a certificate of merit at the Rochester International Film Festival. Hammett has published articles in Cinema Journal, Wide Angle and Criticism. One of her articles is anthologized in Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford University Press).
Hammett joined SF State in 2001. She earned her Ph.D. in rhetoric from University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation presenting a pragmatic critique of classical film theory. She also earned her Master of Arts in Jurisprudence and Social Policy and her J.D. from Berkeley. Hammett holds a Bachelor of Arts in cinema studies from University of Michigan.
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Jennifer HammettPhoto by Hannah Anderson