John Trafton

John Trafton is a film and media scholar specializing in cinema history, visual culture, and the relationship between film and urban space, with a particular emphasis on Los Angeles. He is the author of Movie-Made Los Angeles (Wayne State University Press, 2023) and the forthcoming Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History (Bloomsbury, 2026), which examine how cinema, art, and media have shaped the city’s cultural imagination across the 20th century. His research has been published in journals such as Rethinking History and the Journal of War and Cultural Studies. He teaches courses in film history, aesthetics, and media analysis, with a strong commitment to foundational instruction and inclusive, discussion-driven classrooms. Additionally, he is the co-host of the scholarly film podcast Moving Histories.

Select Publications

Forthcoming

• Los Angeles and Film: A Cultural History. Bloomsbury Press. September 2026.
• “Shōgun: Jidaigeki, Moving Histories, and Streaming Prestige Drama.” In The FX Reader. Edited by David Pierson and Brian Faucette. Wayne State UP. Fall 2026.

Books

• Movie-Made Los Angeles. Wayne State University Press, 2023.
• The American Civil War and the Hollywood War Film. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Other Recent Publications

• “History Unplugged: A Sonic Cartography of 1960s Los Angeles in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Film & History. Fall 2025 issue.
• “Acoustic Shadows: The Sounds of the Past” in Teaching Sound: Aesthetics and Praxis. The 21^st Century Film, TV and Media School series. International Association of Cinema, Audiovisual and Media Schools, 2025.
• Free State of Jones and the New Civil War Cinema.” in TheRoutledge Companion to History and the Moving Image. Edited by Marine Hughes-Warrington, Kim Nelson, and Mia E.M. Treacey. NY: Routledge UP, 2023.
• “Civil War Epistolary and the Hollywood War Film.” in Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media, and the Visual Arts. Edited by Catherine Fowler and Teri Higgens. Amsterdam UP, 2022.