Tricia Jenkins 
Associate Professor | Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, LA, UNITED STATES
Tricia Jenkins is an expert in digital media, international film festivals and how Hollywood and the CIA shape film and television.
Media
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Biography
Tricia Jenkins is an associate professor of Film, TV and Digital Media. She teaches classes in media theory, genres, history and film, and more.
Her book, The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television, entered its second edition in early 2016. That book has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon.com, Studies in Intelligence, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. It has been translated into Chinese, Turkish and Farsi and won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2013. Her work has also appeared in or been cited in the LA Times, National Public Radio, the BBC World Service, The Washington Post, FOX and others.
She recently finished a collection on the role and development of film festivals for I.B. Tauris and serve on the Advisory Board for the Fort Worth Film Commission and the Lone Star Film Festival. She is now working on projects related to Russian political propaganda, fake news, and reality apathy.
Areas of Expertise (7)
Big Data and Media
Television and Film Genres
Hollywood and the CIA
Russian Trolls
International Film Festivals
Critical Media Analysis
Film Festivals
Education (2)
Michigan State University: Ph.D., American Studies 2007
Western Michigan University: M.A., English Language and Literature/Letters 2003
Affiliations (4)
- The Society of Cinema and Media Studies - Member
- The Popular Culture Association - Governing Board Member
- The American Culture Association - Governing Board Member
- The Forth Worth Film Commission - Board Member
Links (1)
Media Appearances (1)
Professor researches CIA’s effect on films
360 online
2012-02-24
Stemming from a love of spy films and espionage thrillers, assistant professor of film-television-digital media Tricia Jenkins wrote a new book examining the CIA’s influence on the film and television industries. The University of Texas Press released “The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television” in early February. Sponsoring editor at the University of Texas Press Jim Burr said the book’s originality piqued his interest...
Articles (4)
Silver Hair, Silver Tongues, Silver Screen: Recollection, Reflection and Representation Through Digital Storytelling with Older People
Communities, Archives and New Collaborative Practices2019 Narrative approaches to research have gained prominence in academia, particularly in the fields of social science and health. Digital Storytelling (DS) is rapidly becoming recognised as a way for people–especially those whose voices are marginalised–to shape, voice and share their stories.
An Act of War? The Interview Affair, the Sony Hack, and the Hollywood–Washington Power Nexus Today
Journal of American Studies2019 Film has been an integral part of the propaganda war fought between the United States and North Korea over the past decade. The international controversy surrounding the Hollywood comedy The Interview in 2014 vividly demonstrated this and, in the process, drew attention to hidden dimensions of the US state security–entertainment complex in the early twenty-first century. Using the emails leaked courtesy of the Sony hack of late 2014, this article explores the Interview affair in detail, on the one hand revealing the close links between Sony executives and US foreign-policy advisers and on the other explaining the difficulties studios face when trying to balance commercial and political imperatives in a global market.
Ageing Narratives: Embedding Digital Storytelling Within the Higher Education Curriculum of Health and Social Care with Older People
Digital Storytelling in Higher Education2017-06-11
Jenkins discusses the use of digital storytelling (DS) with older people within the context of the education of students in Higher Education, who are training to work with older people in health or social work settings. Jenkins draws upon humanistic gerontology and its focus on narrative-based research methods as essential to learning about ageing and the effectiveness of DS to achieve this interdisciplinary approach. She illustrates this through presentation of a case study in Portugal, drawn from the two-year European applied research project Silver Stories in which the benefits of participation in the process and sharing of stories are immediately evident in which the benefits to older people of participation in the process of creating and sharing stories are immediately evident. She also discusses the potential of the digital stories themselves to inform training and research and to influence service provision and policy.
From Zero to Hero: The CIA and Hollywood Today
Cinema Journal2017 This article examines the production, content, and public reception of Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) and Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012). The two Oscar-winning films are set within the context of the Central Intelligence Agency’s efforts over the past two decades to engage more creatively with America’s entertainment industry. While Zero Dark Thirty and Argo are just two of the CIA’s most recent collaborations with Hollywood, it can be argued that, together, they represent the organization’s greatest achievements so far in refashioning the image of US intelligence on the silver screen.
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