Lauren Rabinovitz's current research and teaching interests include early cinema and culture, feminist film history and theory, and theories and history of visual spectacles. Her books include a social history of women, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago and a critical study of feminist filmmakers, Points of Resistance: Women, Power, and Politics in the New York Avant-Garde Cinema, 1943-1971. A pioneer in recognizing the scholarly and pedagogical possibilities of digital technology, her interactive projects are "Yesteryear's Wonderlands," on early 20th century amusement parks, funded by an National Endowment for the Humanities Educational Development Grant, and the co-authored THE REBECCA PROJECT, one of the first CDs to use new media as a tool of film analysis for Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 movie Rebecca. Her latest book, Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity, was published by Columbia University Press in 2011, and her current research and teaching focuses on how American food history offers a unique perspective on modernization, mechanization and American self-identities. In 2007, she was named a Collegiate Fellow in CLAS.
Dr. Rabinovitz is also the Director of the UI's Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts.