Faculty in Conversation Series: Antiracist Pedagogy with Ted Kim and Matt Jacobson

Theodore Kim

Associate Professor of Computer Science

Yale University

Professor Kim researches topics in physics-based simulation, including fire, water, and humans. His work has appeared in over two dozen movies, and received a 2012 SciTech Oscar. Many of the results can be seen on YouTube. Previously, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Pixar Research, where he received screen credits in Cars 3, Coco, Incredibles 2, and Toy Story 4. His first (uncredited) work appeared on-screen on the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter and the SorcererÔÇÖs Stone.

He received a BS in Computer Science in 2001 from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill in 2006 under the supervision of Ming Lin. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at IBM TJ Watson Research Center in 2007, and a Post-Doctoral Associate at Cornell University from 2008-2009 under the supervision of Doug James. From 2011-2015, He was a faculty member at UCSB in the Media Arts and Technology Program and the Department of Computer Science. While there, I received the UCSB Harold J. Plous Award (Junior Faculty of the Year). From 2009-2011, he was an Assistant Professor in CS at the University of Saskatchewan. He interned for Rhythm and Hues Studios in 2000 and 2001.

Matt Jacobson

William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and Professor of African American Studies and of History

Yale University

Matthew Frye Jacobson, PhD Brown University, 1992, is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History, and also Acting Co-Director of the Public Humanities program. He is the author of seven books on race, politics, and culture in the United States: Odetta’s One Grain of Sand (2019); The Historian’s Eye: Photography, History, and the American Present (2019); What Have they Built You to Do?: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America, (with Gaspar Gonzalez, 2006); Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (2005); Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (2000); Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998); and Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States (1995). He also served as creator, writer, and lead researcher for A Long Way from Home: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Desegregation (Hammer & Nail Productions, 2019). The film garnered a Golden Telly Award in the category of General Television Documentary (2019). His teaching and research focus on race in U.S. political culture 1790–present, including U.S. imperialism, immigration and migration, popular culture, Civil Rights, and the juridical structures of U.S. citizenship, in addition to Documentary Studies and Public Humanities.