Alison (Ali) Patterson is a Teaching Professor in the Department of English and Film and Media Studies Program. She earned her doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, following her Masters in Cinema Studies from Tisch School of the Arts NYU. Dr. Patterson is often prospective and first year students’ first point of contact with the Film and Media Studies Program often via the Academic Communities for which she frequently teaches Seminar in Composition: Film for the “How to Make a Movie” community. Online students frequently encounter Dr. Patterson first in Visual Literacy. Her research and teaching interests include history on film, animation, digital media and multimodal composition, and disability studies, and she is committed to excellence in online pedagogy. As a result of her investment in innovative teaching, Dr. Patterson has presented locally and nationally on critical making and is a supervisor for Pitt’s College in High School program (Intro to Film). In addition to service to her department and programs, she currently serves as the Secretary of the University's Phi Beta Kappa chapter honoring excellence in the liberal arts.
Course Taught at Pitt
- Visual Literacy
- Film Analysis Seminar in Composition: Film Introduction to Film
- Film and Literature
- Film and Politics Children and Media Animation Studies
- Disability in Film and Television
- Film Theory Writing for the Public
- Composing Digital Media Integrating Writing and Design
Education & Training
- PhD, Film & Media Studies - University of Pittsburgh
- MA, Cinema Studies - Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Representative Publications
Och, Dana and Alison Patterson. “Beyond Pandemic Pedagogy: Accelerating UDL Adoption and Enhancing Student Choice.” Teaching Media special issue Universal Design for Learning in the Media Studies Classroom. Vol 8, No 1 (Winter 2023).
Peter Greenaway's Contract with the Historical World: Narrative, Digital, Database." Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Vol 32, No 2 (April 2015).
Patterson, Alison. "Disentangling Difference: Song of the Sea, Tomm Moore (2014)." The Deep: A Companion, edited by Simon Bacon. Peter Lang, forthcoming.
Chyutin, Dan and Alison Patterson. “Teaching Trauma in (and out of) Translation: Waltz[ing] with Bashir in English.” Media and Translation: an Interdisciplinary Approach. Edited by Dror Abend-David. New York: Continuum, 2014.
MacCabe, Kathleen Murray and Charles R. Warner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.