Professor of Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University. His book Representing Reality: issues and Concepts in Documentary (Indiana University Press, 1992) has been seminal in applying contemporary film theory to the study of documentary filmmaking. His other books include Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Indiana University Press, 1994), Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2010), and Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010). He is the editor of the two-volume anthology Movies and Methods (University of California Press, 1976, 1985) which has played a crucial role in establishing film studies as an academic discipline.