Visiting Scholar Offers Unique Perspectives on Media, Culture

Dr. Tamar Salibian brings a diverse set of skills in film, video and photography, as well as her experience as a teacher and tutor to her role as Webb’s visiting scholar in 2021-22.

Salibian received her doctorate in media studies from Claremont Graduate University and is an expert on how society consumes media and cultural products – including reality TV. To this, she adds nearly two decades of practical experience in video editing and production as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography and a Master of Fine Arts in film/video.

“It was a very winding road that brought me to my Ph.D.,” Salibian said “I had considered becoming a professor, but I learned after working for an area charter school that I love working with high school students.”

Salibian is teaching American Society Past and Present for 10^th-graders and is excited about the immersive focus of Webb’s academic program.

“This is engagement with history,” she said. “There’s such a strong potential for co-creation in a student-centered pedagogy.”

Salibian also is preparing an Unbounded Days program she hopes will draw on her passion for critical studies of the media and cultural products we consume daily as a society. She has firsthand knowledge of the power of this engagement from her activism on the Free Britney movement, where she has contributed to a series of viral social media posts.