Department of English

Kevin McKenna is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University of Florida. He earned his M.A. in Film and New Media Studies from the University of South Florida after completing a B.A. in English Literature from Salisbury University. He has a forthcoming essay that will be published in LibraryPress@UF’s Plant Life anthology in 2023, and he has published previous research in Cinemedia: Journal of the SFSU School of Cinema, Dark Forces at Work: Essays on Social Dynamics and Cinematic Horrors, and in the Museum Nights Exhibit Catalog for the Harn Museum of Art. He has presented his research at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Cultural Studies Association, and Film & History annual conferences.

At the University of Florida, he has taught ENG2300: Introduction to Film Analysis, ENG1131: Theories of Space and Place in Cinema and New Media, ENG2210: Technical Communication in addition to composition courses for the University Writing Program. During the 2022-23 academic year, he was awarded an English Department Graduate Teaching Award. He has served as an officer in the English Graduate Organization and Graduate Film Studies Group, and as a peer reviewer for the Waves and TRACE journals. His current research broadly sits at the intersection between experimental films, critical plant studies, elemental humanities, and philosophy of mind. His dissertation project focuses on experimental cinematic modes of speculatively representing, approaching, and experiencing nonzoological consciousness and how they may generate a cinematic ethic of the more-than-human.