Joshua Yumibe Named an MSU Research Foundation Professor

Joshua Yumibe Named an MSU Research Foundation Professor

In recognition of his influential scholarship in film and media studies and his contributions to Michigan State University’s research mission, Joshua Yumibe, Professor of Film Studies, was named an MSU Research Foundation Professor. He is among just four MSU faculty members to earn this prestigious designation in 2025.

Portrait of Professor Joshua Yumibe against a dark, softly blurred background. He is wearing a dark textured blazer over a checkered shirt, looking directly at the camera with a slight smile. The lighting is even and professional, highlighting his facial features clearly.
Dr. Joshua Yumibe

MSU Research Foundation Professorships are awarded to outstanding faculty who demonstrate excellence in research and teaching while enhancing the prominence of the institution. This designation has been awarded to only a select few individuals across campus since its inception in 2014. Currently, there are 58 MSU Research Foundation Professors at MSU, including Yumibe.

“I feel profoundly honored and delighted. It’s an amazing award to receive,” Yumibe said. “It affirms the work I’ve been doing in ways that I feel very grateful for. It also affirms the work in the humanities overall, and I hope it continues to open the door for more fantastic faculty in our college who are doing such amazing research.”

A scholar of film history and visual culture, Yumibe joined MSU in 2013 and has helped shape the university’s reputation in cinema and media studies. His research focuses on the aesthetic and technological history of cinema, with particular emphasis on the role of color in moving images.

“Simply put, Professor Yumibe is an exceptional film historian and humanist with a very impressive track record of producing exceedingly fine, nuanced, innovative scholarly work,” Justus Nieland, Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Michigan State University, wrote in his nomination letter.

“Simply put, Professor Yumibe is an exceptional film historian and humanist with a very impressive track record of producing exceedingly fine, nuanced, innovative scholarly work.”

Justus Nieland, Professor and Chair of MSU’s Department of English

Since earning his Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago in 2007, Yumibe has authored, co-authored, and co-edited eight acclaimed books. His first, Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), earned honorable mention from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies for its groundbreaking exploration of early film color. His later collaborations with international scholars have resulted in award-winning volumes including Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s (Columbia University Press, 2019), which was written with Sarah Street and received both the Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award and the IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Prize.

Book cover for Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s by Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe. The cover features a colorized black-and-white photo of a woman in 1920s attire standing in a vintage living room, lighting a cigarette. Floral wallpaper and period furnishings frame the scene, with bold white and pink lettering overlaying the image.
Book cover for Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury, edited by Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe. The design mimics a strip of color film and features two nearly identical images of a woman seated beside a color calibration chart, with colorful fabric panels in the background. The title is set in bold white and yellow text against a black background.
Book cover for Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema, co-authored by Tom Gunning, Joshua Yumibe, Giovanna Fossati, and Jonathon Rosen. The cover features a hand-colored film still of a theatrical scene with a wide-eyed, horned man’s exaggerated face surrounded by floral and leafy decorations. Two young girls in early 20th-century costumes stand on the left. The title is printed in white in the top right corner, with a rainbow-colored spine label on the left.
The book covers for Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s (top left) and Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema (bottom), both co-written by Dr. Yumibe, and Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury (top right), which Yumibe co-edited.

“I truly do not know how Dr. Yumibe manages to be so prolific in his scholarly efforts, but Michigan State can be proud to say that they have on their faculty one of the most dedicated researchers and publishers in the field,” Marsha Gordon, Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University, wrote in her nomination letter.

Yumibe is currently working on a new book, titled Chromatic Blackness: Color, Race, and the Moving Image. Supported by a HARP Production Award and now the MSU Research Foundation Professorship, the project explores how color functions in the work of Black filmmakers and artists from the late 1960s to the present.

Glass entrance doors to an art gallery with the exhibit title "Dreaming in Color" displayed in white lettering. Above the doors is a vivid film still featuring black-and-white figures standing beside billowing clouds of pastel-colored smoke. Exhibition walls and panels are visible inside the gallery space.
The Dreaming in Color exhibition, held at the George Eastman Museum in 2018, that Dr. Yumibe curated.

“Chromatic Blackness moves from the midcentury to the contemporary context to examine the use of color by Black filmmakers in North America, Europe, West Africa, and beyond,” Yumibe said. “It honors artists such as Djibril Diop Mambéty, Julie Dash, and Steve McQueen who are doing really amazing things with color in their work.”

Yumibe also is known for his curatorial work and dedication to archival scholarship. With Paolo Cherchi Usai, he co-directs the Davide Turconi Project, which is housed at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. This initiative preserves and presents rare film artifacts from the early years of cinema. In 2018, he curated the exhibit Dreaming in Color at the George Eastman Museum. He also has curated various film programs, most recently at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Italy, and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Yumibe is an editor of the journal Screen and co-editor of the Contemporary Film Directors Series at the University of Illinois Press. He has co-edited five volumes, most recently Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury (Rutgers University Press, 2024).

“Overall, his engagement as a researcher, book (co-)author and (co-)editor, conference organizer, gallery exhibition curator, etc., is tireless and exceptional,” Giorgio Bertellini, Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan, wrote in a letter of support for Yumibe’s nomination.

“Having an intellectual home like the College of Arts & Letters has made a tremendous difference, not just in supporting the scholarship that I do but also providing a rich intellectual home and community.”

Dr. Joshua Yumibe

Yumibe received MSU’s Teacher-Scholar Award in 2016 and served as Director of MSU’s Film Studies Program from 2013 to 2021. He credits the university community with fostering an environment where his research can thrive.

“Having an intellectual home like the College of Arts & Letters has made a tremendous difference, not just in supporting the scholarship that I do but also providing a rich intellectual home and community,” he said. “I have had such wonderful colleagues at MSU, thanks to the research environment that the university has created.”

Professor Joshua Yumibe sits on a desk at the front of a classroom, engaged in conversation with students. He faces the class, gesturing as he speaks. Behind him is a whiteboard and a large projection of a close-up image of an eye, partially visible. Three students are seated in the foreground, listening attentively.
Dr. Yumibe teaching a seminar on film theory at MSU.

With this appointment, Yumibe joins the ranks of the university’s most distinguished scholars, which also includes Ruth Nicole Brown, Professor and the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies, who was named an MSU Research Foundation Professor in 2021.

Faculty awardees retain the title of MSU Research Foundation Professor for the duration of their service to MSU. Besides the title, honorees also are typically provided supplemental scholarly funding for the first five years of receiving this award with the primary aim of enhancing the international stature of the institution in research and creative activity. This award was established and is funded through the generosity of the MSU Research Foundation.

Yumibe will be recognized during the 2025 MSU State of the University and Investiture for Endowed Faculty event on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts as the university honors all the newest Endowed Chairs, Endowed Professors, MSU Foundation Professors, and Red Cedar Professors.

By Austin Curtis and Kim Popiolek

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