Meredith A. Bak

Meredith A. Bak is an associate professor in the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University–Camden. She holds a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University, and a B.A. in Media Arts from Brigham Young University.

Bak researches children’s toys, film and media, and visual and material culture from the nineteenth century to the present. She is the author of Playful Visions: Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children’s Media Culture (MIT Press, 2020), and her scholarship has appeared in journals and edited collections including Early Popular Visual Culture, Film History, and The Moving Image.