Artel Great
Email for office hours appointment.
Biography
Dr. Artel Great is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in African-American Cinema Studies and Associate Professor of Cinema and Media at the San Francisco State University School of Cinema.
He is also an Independent Spirit Award-nominated filmmaker and a leading authority on race and popular culture. He earned his Ph.D. at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and he is the first Black valedictorian at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, where he graduated summa cum laude and holds both his B.A. and M.A.
His publicly-engaged scholarship contributes to the production of knowledge in Black cinema and media and Black cultural theory. His writing and filmmaking praxis exemplifies an intellectual and creative force that transcends boundaries and defies conventional categorization, bridging the gap between Black intellectual traditions, social justice, and the politics of film and media. His research explores the phenomenology of Blackness and the culture, politics, aesthetics, and social history of cinema and its critical discourses within the Black-American context and across the African Diaspora.
Dr. Great is the author of The Black Pack: Comedy, Race, & Resistance (Rutgers University Press, 2025), which is the first book to chronicle the resistant philosophies and hidden history of the iconic collaborations between a group of legendary comedians — Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall — who joined forces as the “Black Pack” in the late 1980s to create a series of politically-charged comedies that revolutionized popular culture and transformed American humor.
He is also the primary editor of the book Black Cinema and Visual Culture: Art and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2023).
As an artist and filmmaker, Dr. Great’s socially-engaged praxis expands the expressive possibilities of Black life on-screen by uncovering new narratives that decolonize Black images from historically narrow depictions. He has written and directed two award-winning motion pictures that have screened at national and international film festivals. His films have been showcased in major multiplexes, art-house theaters, museums, as well as on Netflix, Amazon Prime, cable, and broadcast television.
Dr. Artel Great serves as the Cultural Critic in Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and he was recently acknowledged as a Finalist in the Sundance Episodic Lab. His work has appeared in popular publications such as The History Channel, New York Times, The New Republic, CNN, The Guardian, and USA Today.
In September 2025, Dr. Great was named a recipient of the 2025-26 Fellowship from the BIPOC Critics Lab at the world-renowned Public Theater in New York City, where he will work to expand the language, traditions, and radical poetics of Black cultural and cinematic criticism.
For more information or media inquiries, visit: www.artelgreat.com.
Research Interest
Black cinema and visual culture; Hollywood film and television; subversive humor; Black intellectual traditions and social movements; sports, race, and society; American popular culture; cinemas of the African Diaspora; Black stardom; hip-hop culture and aesthetics; cultural politics and arts activism
Selected Filmography
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How Disney Built America (on-air contributor, The History Channel)
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Love Walks In (writer/director,)
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Love Like Winter (writer/director)
Selected Publications
- “Black Cinema Matters,” The New Republic (essay).
- “Too Hot for TV: Black Sketch Comedy and the Politics of Crossing-Over,” Black Camera (essay).
- “On Decolonizing Film Studies,” Filmmaker Magazine (quoted).
- “The Untold Story of the Wild West’s Black Cowboys,” CNN (quoted).
- “Why Is Hollywood Denying Black Queer Love?” The Guardian (quoted).
- “The Compton Cowboys Bring the Yeehaw Agenda to South Los Angeles,” Playboy Magazine (quoted).
- “Bring the Payne: The Erasure of the Black Sitcom and the Emergence of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” in From Madea to Media Mogul: Critical Perspectives on Tyler Perry (book chapter).