Assistant Provost
Susan Ohmer
As Assistant Provost, Susan Ohmer works to formulate and implement policies and programs designed to improve the recruitment and retention of women faculty. She also oversees the Hesburgh Libraries and the University of Notre Dame Press. Dr. Ohmer has chaired the University Committee on Women Faculty and Students since 2007 and served as a Provost Fellow from 2007-2009.
As a member of the faculty, Dr. Ohmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre and holds The William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Chair of Modern Communication. She teaches classes in film and television history, digital culture, and media and the presidency. Her research focuses in particular on the film industry during the 1940s and analyzes the ways in which Hollywood interacted with other institutions in U.S. culture during this period. Her book George Gallup in Hollywood (Columbia University Press, 2006) assesses how film studios and producers used public opinion research to select and develop film subjects in that era. Dr. Ohmer’s articles have appeared in such journals as The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, The Journal of Film and Video, and Film History, and in the anthologies Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences, Global Currents, and American Cinema of the 1930s.
Dr. Ohmer’s professional service has included a term as an elected officer of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the professional association for film and television scholars, and membership on several editorial boards, including Cinema Journal and the E-media Journal. She has also served on the Steering Committee for the Gender Studies program from 2003-2009 and on the Arts and Letters Undergraduate Studies Committee from 2000-2003 and 2006-2008. Before joining the faculty at Notre Dame she taught at the University of Michigan, Vassar College and the New School for Social Research.
Dr. Ohmer completed her undergraduate studies at the Ohio State University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor of arts degree in English and a bachelor of fine arts degree in Art History. She earned her doctorate in Cinema Studies at New York University, where she received a Graduate Arts and Science’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship and the Jay Leyda Memorial Teaching Fellowship. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies awarded her dissertation first prize in the field. She has received several grants to support her research, including visiting fellowships to the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the Hartman Collection at Duke University, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas-Austin.
