Prof. Terri Francis is Visiting Associate Professor in Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Having earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago, she specializes in learning what we don’t already know about African American cinema, literature and culture, American experimental films and the history of motion pictures in the Caribbean. Prof. Francis’ forthcoming book Race Burlesque: Josephine Baker, Black Film and Modernism introduces a new way of thinking about the anxiety-ridden intersection of race and gender inequalities, humor and the erotic in American popular culture. Sounding the Nation: Jamaican Film History, 1900-1972 is Prof. Francis’ next project. Her book pioneers the completely new territory of Jamaican modernity and cinephilia for film studies, American Studies, Caribbean Studies and African American Studies. She is guest editor of a special close-up on Afrosurrealism in Film/Video for Black Camera due to be published October 2013. The issue sheds much needed light on the rarely seen experimental, absurd and whimsical dimensions of filmmaking and thought in African Diaspora cinemas.