Department of Literature and Language

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Chelsea Wessels

Chelsea R. Wessels, PhD

Co-Director, Film and Media Studies Minor | Associate Professor, English

Dr. Chelsea Wessels joined ETSU in 2018 as an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Film Studies minor. She received her PhD from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where her work focused on the emergence of the western as a political and popular genre in global cinema. Her research interests include local cinema history and archives, global film genres, and feminist film. Her publications include writing for the National Film Registry, journal articles in Transformations and Frames Cinema Journal, and chapters in Teaching Transnational Cinemas and The Western in the Global South. She previously taught at Ithaca College, Cornell University, and Colby College. An advocate for community engagement with independent film, she has served on multiple festival juries and currently works with the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival and the Johnson City Film Festival.