Rate My Professor Jesse McLean

Her academic interests include nonfiction and narrative hybridity, adaptation, appropriation, and collage; editing; sound design; and intersections of art and popular culture. McLean's films, probing themes of memory, desire, and human-nonhuman relations, have premiered and screened at major venues worldwide, including CPH:DOX (world premiere of Light Needs, 2023), New York Film Festival, Rotterdam, Venice Biennale, Kassel Dokfest, and Videoex. Notable works distributed by Video Data Bank encompass Light Needs (74 min., 2023), Curious Fantasies (8 min., 2019), Wherever You Go, There We Are (12 min., 2017), See a Dog, Hear a Dog (18 min., 2016), I’m in Pittsburgh and It’s Raining (14 min., 2015), Just Like Us (15 min., 2013), and The Invisible World (20 min., 2012). Awards include Jury Award at Onion City (2020, Curious Fantasies), Best Editing at Janela Internacional de Cinema do Recife (2015), FIPRESCI Prize at Oberhausen (2014), Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship (2016), MacDowell Fellowship (2016), and Center for 21st Century Studies Fellowship (2017). She recently received the UWM Research Assistance Fund (2025) and teaches editing, post-production, appropriated media, and capstone projects, mentoring graduate students.