Tricia Jenkins

Tricia Jenkins is Associate Professor of Film, Television and Digital Media in the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University, where she teaches courses in film history, genre studies, and media analysis.
He research includes, among other things, the covert involvement in the development and production of Hollywood movies, the culture and impact of the over-5000 international film festivals occurring around the world each year, and Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections through social media.
Background
Tricia Jenkins received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University, and attended Ambassador University, founded by the apocalyptic cult The Worldwide Church of God, for her undergraduate education.
She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is married to poet and professor of English literature, Nat O'Reilly.
Research and Writing
Jenkins has published widely for both the public and the academy, in newspapers and magazines and for academic journals, such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, Cinema Journal, Media, Culture & Society, , Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, The Journal of Popular Culture, and the Texas National Security Review.
She wrote International Film Festivals: Contemporary Cultures and History Beyond Venice and Cannes, which surveys the scholarship on the growth and development of the over-5000 film festivals produced around the world each year, drawing on academic disciplines like urban studies, sociology, and film criticism. She covers both the well-known festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Toronto, and also the growth of the smaller genre film festivals.
She is the author of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television, which the CIA recommends to be read by its intelligence officers, and which is considered the "best book out there . . .when it comes to the modern era of the CIA’s propagandistic role in entertainment." The book gives an account of the intelligence agency's "unprecedented" actions to do “damage control” and bolster its image by establishing formal production and creative ties with Hollywood, initially through the work of Chase Brandon, an intelligence operations officer who acted as a liaison to Hollywood and who consulted on a number of film and TV scripts to further CIA interests. She also recounts how Hollywood publicist Michael Sands secretly supported the CIA's involvement in Hollywood throughout the 1990s. Movies and TV shows that Jenkins claims were developed or influenced by the CIA include , , , , and The Recruit.
Media and Public Appearances
Jenkins's work on CIA propaganda and its involvement in Hollywood has been profiled by a number of publications and organizations, such as the , The Center for the Study of Intelligence, , the national security publication Lawfare, NBC News, , and The Independent.
She has spoken widely on the topic at academic conferences (including the Lennox Seminar on Propaganda and Political Persuasion at Trinity University), and in the media, on television networks like Fox News, Al Jazeera, and Public Radio International.
Controversy
Jenkins has argued that the CIA's involvement in Hollywood has been so overreaching at times as to break U.S. laws that make it illegal to use use government funds to engage in such propagandistic activity. Hayden Peake, curator of the CIA Historical Intelligence Collection, calls her research "asserted but not proven."
She has also argued that the CIA's work to influence Hollywood films and TV has been at times in violation of the First Amendment, because the CIA's access and support given to filmmakers is withdrawn filmmakers who refuse to capitulate to the CIA's demands, a claim that conservative legal scholar Julias Taranto scoffed at.

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