Jane Gaines is a professor in the Film Program, School of the Arts at Columbia University and the award-winning author of two books: Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice and the Law and Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era. She received an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholarly Award for her forthcoming book on early cinema, Fictioning Histories: Women Film Pioneers and is working on The Documentary Destiny of Cinema. She has published articles on intellectual property, documentary theory, feminism and film, early cinema, fashion and film, and critical race theory in Cinema Journal, Screen, Cultural Studies, Framework, Camera Obscura, and Women and Performance. She received her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University.