Vera Dika holds a Ph.D. in cinema studies from New York University and has taught at UCLA and USC. Specializing in American film after 1973, Dika is the author of two books, Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: the Uses of Nostalgia (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Games of Terror: Halloween and the Films of the Stalker Cycle 1978-1983 (Farleigh Dickenson University Press, 1991). She has written film criticism for Art in America, Artforum, and The Los Angeles Times. Her critical writings also appear in a number of anthologies, including “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather” in The Godfather Trilogy, (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Dika was a founding editor of Millennium Film Journal, and is currently an Associate Member of the Columbia University Film Seminar. In 2005, Professor Dika was awarded an NEH grant to attend a Summer Seminar on “German and European Studies” at Smith College. Her current research includes interest in transnational cultural exchanges and in cross media studies. She is preparing an essay on the Indianerfilme, a cycle of East German Westerns that contest and complement the American Western and the Italian Spaghetti Westerns. She is also writing a book on Punk, No Wave, and artists’ films entitled Downtown Filmworks: New York City 1977-1987.