Jessica Ruffin completed her PhD with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory in August 2021. Her dissertation, “A World Divided: Schopenhauer, Aesthetics, and Cinematic Experience,” earned her the Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship in 2020. The work draws on the aesthetics and ethics of Arthur Schopenhauer in order to reframe concepts of aesthetic experience and historical consciousness in early media theory in light of their ethical promise. As of September 2021, she is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Film, Television and Media at University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. In 2023, she will join the literature faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Assistant Professor. Jessica is former editor of Millennium Film Journal (2008–2013) and Qui Parle (2018–2019) and, since 2015, serves on the board of Aubin Pictures, a nonprofit social justice media company based in New York City.