Overview
Hira Mahmood is a Ph.D. candidate in Performing and Media Arts. Her scholarship focuses on cinema forms, mise-en-scène, costuming, and props as the starting point of analysis to read affect and atmosphere in film.
Hira has served as President of the Graduate Researchers of Media and Performing Arts for the 2024 - 2025 academic year; an organizer of the graduate student colloquium PMAPS (Presentations in Media and Performance) from 2022 - 2024; and currently serves as a Graduate Resident Fellow for the Flora Rose House in the West Campus Housing System. In 2025, she was awarded The Russell Family Teaching Award for devotion to teaching, classroom presence, course preparation, and student counseling. She has presented her work at conferences such as Association of the Arts of the Present, Popular Culture Association, and Society for Cinema and Media Studies. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Georgia State University, M.A. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Georgia State University, and M.A. in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Davis.
Outside of academia, Hira enjoys all things DIY: cassette tapes, house shows, and ephemeral media. She has organized for the Atlanta Zine Fest and worked as a curator and archivist for the LOW Museum, a DIY gallery space in Atlanta dedicated to emphasizing “low” Internet culture. She also runs a tape label, Ecology Records, which releases compilation tapes featuring local bands and artists.
Research Focus
Aesthetics, affect, feminist theory, film genres, visual and material cultures, subjectivity
In the news
- Hira Mahmood Wins 2025 Russell Family Teaching Award
- PMAPS Colloquium Explores the Stigma of Marginalization in Performing and Media Arts