Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: film history, television history, media history, dance history, history of dance on screen, 20th century U.S. history, history of race/gender/sexuality in media, history of media representation, history of media performance

About Me: Dr. Pamela Krayenbuhl is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma. Prior to joining the UW Tacoma faculty, she was an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication program at Northwestern University in Qatar. Krayenbuhl is a media historian whose scholarship focuses on the relationship between moving bodies and moving images, from early cinema to contemporary video games. Her book White Screens, Black Dance: Race and Masculinity in the United States at Midcentury (Oxford UP, 2025) examines danced performances of masculinity by both Black and white male stars on mid-twentieth century American film and television.

A dancer and choreographer as well as a scholar, Krayenbuhl co-founded both the Ballet Company at Berkeley and Modet Dance Collective. She has also worked at the Chicago Film Archives as a researcher and archivist; she researched and catalogued the 500+ films in the Ruth Page Collection.

Recent Publications: Krayenbuhl, Pamela. ‘“World-famous”: the Nicholas Brothers’ Black stardom on television, 1951–1977.‘ New Review of Film and Television Studies 23, no. 2 (2025): 1–26.

Krayenbuhl, Pamela. White Screens, Black Dance: Race and Masculinity in the United States at Midcentury. (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Krayenbuhl, Pamela. “Twyla Tharp’s Making Television Dance (1977) and the Technologized Dancing Body.” The International Journal of Screendance 14, no. 1 (2024): 58–72.

Krayenbuhl, Pamela. “The Dance Company Film.” Journal of Film and Video 74, no. 1–2 (2022): 61–74.

Krayenbuhl, Pamela. “Teaching Global Music Video.” In “Teaching ‘the Global’ in Media Studies,” edited by Juan Llamas-Rodriguez. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies: Teaching Media Dossier 7, no. 1 (Winter 2022).

Harlig, A., Abidin, C., Boffone, T., Bowker, K., Eloi, C., Krayenbuhl, P., & Oh, C. “TikTok and Short-Form Screendance Before and After Covid.” The International Journal of Screendance 12 (2021).