Biography
Chelsea Kai Roesch is an MA/PhD student in Film and Media Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a B.A. in Media and Cultural Studies from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. At Hampshire she focused on political theory, critical race and gender studies, media and cultural studies, and American foreign and domestic policy. She completed a two-year long guided study of post-9/11 media narratives about Muslims, the Middle East, and American empire, “Media and the State in Post-9/11 Politics.” Her senior thesis, “American Rape Culture: Media Representations of Sexual Violence in a Postfeminist Era” investigated the historical roots of rape as a tool of social control in the US and rape culture’s modern manifestation in American media.
After her undergraduate studies, Chelsea received a two-year teaching fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport to serve as a North American Language and Cultural Ambassador in Madrid, Spain. After living in Madrid, she consulted for tech startups in Los Angeles and San Francisco on best practices for hiring software engineers.
Chelsea is an Editorial Assistant at Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies (Duke University Press).
Her current research interests include: American nationalism, Internet subcultures, right-wing movements, memes, Marxism, popular culture, sexual violence, television, state violence, feminism, and critical race theory.