Film

Dr. Pete Porter teaches filmic arts history and theory/criticism.  He also serves as director of The Spokane International Film Festival. Before joining the film faculty in 2004, Porter earned a PhD from Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and degrees from Indiana State and Grand Valley State. His dissertation argues that the ancient literary form Menippean satire, a travesty of The Odyssey, the work of Plato, and old comedy, has taken shape in movies from Duck Soup (1934) to The Big Lebowski (1998).

Dr. Porter's recent work studies media representations of non-human animals from a cognitive-ethical perspective. He is the Film Review Editor for Society & Animals, an international journal of Human-Animal Studies. He has published in S & A, The Journal of Moving Image Studies, and the Michigan Academician.  Dr. Porter serves as faculty advisor to the EWU Film Society and on the board and The Friends of Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.