Baran Germen, who completed his Ph.D. at Oregon in 2019, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. His research and teaching focus on global cinema and comparative media studies, ranging across melodrama, queer theory, and secularism. His current book project proposes the arabesque as an affective cultural formation that arises from a sense of victimhood rooted in Islamic discourse across media.