Jef Burnham serves as an instructor in DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts. He is a screenwriter, podcaster, and film critic with research interests in cult film, horror, video games, fan communities, and new media. He has taught courses/lectured on screenwriting, film structure and development, Marvel movies, media ethics, cult cinema, and the works of filmmakers Robert Altman and David Cronenberg.
Jef is the author of “The Primetime Heroics of Small Screen Avengers: Finding Sociopolitical Value in Marvel TV Movies,” featured in McFarland & Co.’s Marvel Comics into Film: Essays on Adaptations since the 1940s (2016). He has also co-authored essays featured in Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Scarecrow Press, 2013), Remake Television: Reboot, Reuse, Recycle (Lexington Books, 2014) and Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies (Routledge, forthcoming), and contributed a chapter toSherlock Holmes and Philosophy (Open Court, 2011).
His life outside of academia has found him co-hosting CadaverCast: A Monster Movie Podcast with his kid Al, and working in media criticism as well as film. Jef holds both an MFA in Screenwriting and an MA in Media and Cinema Studies from DePaul University, as well as a BA in Film and Video from Columbia College Chicago.