• Film & Media Studies
• Transnational Feminism
• Gender & Sexuality
• Race &Postcolonial Studies
• French Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Disability Studies
• FeministAffect Theory
• Horror

Stony Brook University, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, PhD, 2017

Stony Brook University, Comparative Literature, MA, 2014

Stony Brook University, Women's and Gender Studies, Advanced Graduate Certificate,2013

New York University, French Studies, MA, 2010Aquinas College, English and French, BA, 2005

Grand Rapids Community College, AA, 2003

Refereed Journal Articles:

Schaefer, Joy C. “Domestic AI is the New Monstrous-Feminine: Compulsory Roles forRobot-Girls & Women inM3gan(2023).”Cine-Excess Journal, Issue 6, Raising Hell:Demons, Darkness, and the Abject, 2024.S

chaefer, Joy C. “The Western Frontier & American Pulp in the Zone: Marcel Carnéé’sTerrain vagueas Proto-‘Banlieue Film’,”JCMS: Journal of Cinema & Media Studies 60.1(2020): 111-132.

Schaefer, Joy C. “Truffaut’sL’Enfant sauvage(The Wild Child): Evoking Autism and theNascent ‘Eugenic Atlantic’.”Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture1.1 (2020): 10-41.

Schaefer, Joy C. “The Spatial-Affective Economy of (Post)Colonial Paris: ReadingHaneke’sCachéthroughOctobre à Paris.”Studies in European Cinema14.1 (2017): 48-65.

Schaefer, Joy C. “Must We Burn Hitchcock? (Re)viewing Trauma & Effecting SolidaritywithThe Birds.”Quarterly Review of Film & Video32.4 (2015): 329-343.

Book Chapter:

Schaefer, Joy C. “Adapting Medical Reports into Narrative Film: Autism, Eugenics, and Savagery in Truffaut’sL’Enfant sauvage(The Wild Child),”All in the Mind: Adaptations of Mental and Cognitive Disability in Popular Media, edited by Whitney Hardin and Julia Kiernan, Lexington Books, pp. 35-54, 2022.

Invited Contribution:

Schaefer, Joy C. “Towards a Transnational Feminist Film Studies Classroom.” TeachingGlobal Media Dossier, edited by Juan Llamas-Rodriguez,JCMS: Journal of Cinema andMedia Studies, 2022.

Select Grants, Fellowships, and Awards:

Affiliate Faculty Research Grant, CSCE, GVSU, 2025.

Junior Faculty Fellow, Ferris State University, 2023-2024.

Course-based Research Experience (CRE) Faculty Grant, Lawrence TechnologicalUniversity, 2020-2022.

Vivien Hartog Best Graduate Instructor Award, Women's and Gender Studies, StonyBrook University, 2016.

Dr. Joy C. Schaefer is a transnational feminist film scholar and inclusive educator. Her work on the representation of marginalized social identities in film has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, and she has designed and taught over forty different interdisciplinary undergraduate courses. She grew up in Northwest Michigan and is happy to be back in her home state as a full-time faculty member at GVSU. The School of Interdisciplinary Studies is a fitting academic home for her, as her teaching and research combines the (already interdisciplinary) fields of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Film and Media Studies; French and Postcolonial Studies; and Cultural Studies. Dr. Schaefer’s favorite mode of teaching is online: she enjoys leveraging her training in personalized and competency-based learning to teach culturally responsive asynchronous courses.

From 2020 to 2022, Dr. Schaefer was a Senior Lecturer of Critical Media Studies at Lawrence Technological University, where she designed and taught the theory, criticism, and writing curriculum for the Media Communication program. She was aVisiting Professor of English at GVSU from 2017 to 2020 and has also taught in theCommunication & Media Studies Department at Fordham University, where shedesigned the university’s first Queer Studies in Film & TV course. While in New York,Dr. Schaefer co-curated the inaugural New York Feminist Film Week at AnthologyFilm Archives. She has traveled to Europe numerous times for study, archivalresearch, conference presentations, and teaching. During the 2007-2008 school year,she taught English to middle school students in Paris as part of the Frenchgovernment’s Teaching Assistant Program (TAPIF).