Biography
In Fall 2023, Kyna McClenaghan will be starting her fourth year as a PhD candidate in Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara, broadly researching occult media histories. After studying feminist philosophy, science and technology studies, and film for her bachelor’s degree at New York University, and subsequently feminist film theory, the occult, and folk horror for her master’s degree at Columbia University, she merged aspects of both projects and began working on histories of the occult and technology. Her dissertation focuses on the intersections of California media industries and occult practices between the 1930s and 1970s. Her other projects include the Alt-Right Media Literacy Series (a speaker series on how media is used by the alt-right and/or Far Right), and the Californian Ideology Project (a working group centered on the political and media industry stakes of Californian ideology). She currently works as the Managing Editor of Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies.