PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN)

MA, Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN)

BA, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Occidental College (Los Angeles, CA)

Aleksander Sedzielarz specializes in intersections of visual and sonic cultures with the written word–with a focus on East-West multimedia aesthetics in centers of diaspora, migration, and cultural hybridity. Sedzielarz’ research inquires into the poetics and acoustics of cinema and the relationship between screenwriting, screen, and soundtrack. At Wenzhou-Kean, Sedzielarz teaches courses in which students analyze film and literature through theories of history and political economy. He guides advanced undergraduates in research projects based in critical theory, formalist approaches to film and literature, and genre studies. Sedzielarz is co-editor of the volume Transnational Crime Cinema (University of Edinburgh Press, 2022). His recent journal articles appear in the peer-reviewed journals Word & Image, Wide Screen, and Cinéma & Cie and a recent book chapter appears in Music, Sound, and Documentary Film in the Global South (Lexington Books; edited by Christopher Ballengee).

Sedzielarz completed graduate work and taught in the Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature and Moving Image Studies programs at the University of Minnesota from 2011 to 2019. A postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2022, he was also a lecturer for courses in Chinese cinema at the University of California, Riverside from 2021 to 2022. Originally from Chicago, Sedzielarz lived for periods in Los Angeles, Taipei, the San Francisco Bay Area, Minneapolis, Shanghai, Seattle, and Atlanta before relocating to Wenzhou.

Sedzielarz is currently working on a monograph on transnational screenwriting practice and another on screen and production cultures emerging around Hong Kong film and music idols. As editor, Sedzielarz is preparing a manuscript for an edited collection on the concept of “new waves,” or popular cultural fronts in music, film, fashion, and the visual arts. The volume will offer theorizations of worldwide new waves in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by engaging political theory, economic critique, sound studies methodologies, and ecocritical thought.