Dr. Jülide Etem (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also serves as the Director of the Film Studies Concentration and Chair of the Film Studies Curriculum Committee. Her innovative and interdisciplinary research explores how film operates within institutional contexts—as a dynamic medium strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and distributed to serve various social, cultural, economic, and political objectives.

Dr. Etem’s forthcoming book, Film Diplomacy and US-Turkey Relations: Mediating Race and Modernization (Columbia University Press), offers a groundbreaking analysis of educational films as potent instruments deployed between 1930 and 1986 to address infrastructural challenges, communicate public health initiatives, execute information campaigns, enact foreign policy, and influence social practices within Turkey and the broader US-Turkey relationship. She argues that film functioned as a strategic tool to solidify international alliances, embedding racialized assumptions within broader narratives of modernization.

Currently, Dr. Etem is advancing critical new scholarship through three timely research projects. The first addresses the urgent public health crisis of gun violence, interrogating how film serves as a medium for advocacy, awareness, and transformative dialogue around this deeply entrenched issue. This project has been supported by grants from the Gun Violence Solutions Project, Karsh Institute for Democracy, Office of Citizen Scholar Development, and Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost for the Arts.

Her second project, Physics Film Experiments during the Cold War, investigates the fascinating intersection of scientific inquiry and visual culture, exploring how science experiments captured on film shaped transnational exchanges of knowledge and contributed to narratives of technological progress and geopolitical competition.

Her third project, Family Planning Narratives on Film examines how cinema was used to construct and disseminate narratives around reproductive health and population control during a pivotal period of global demographic shifts and policy interventions. Through this work, she uncovers the ideological and visual strategies that shaped public perceptions and governmental policies on reproductive autonomy and social engineering.

Dr. Etem’s research highlights the influence of film as a mediator of knowledge, power, and ideology across historical, political, and scientific domains. By critically engaging with the intersections of media, policy, and social change, her scholarship not only deepens our understanding of film’s institutional functions but also underscores its continued relevance as a tool for shaping global narratives and public discourse.

 To get connected, please reach Dr. Etem at aje4v@virginia.edu.