Ross Melnick is professor of film and media studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. He was named an NEH Fellow (2015) and an Academy Film Scholar (2017) for his forthcoming book, Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022). He is also the author of American Showman: Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (Columbia University Press, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-founder of the Cinema Treasures website.