Education

M.F.A., Radio-TV-Film, Northwestern University 
B.S., Cinema and Photography, Ithaca College 

Bio

 Laura Kissel is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker (Southeastern Region twice nominated, 2009 and 2017). She has taught in the Film and Media undergraduate and graduate programs since 1999 and was promoted to full professor in 2017.

 Professor Kissel’s films explore and make visible the structures through which public life is organized, with a focus on institutions, systems, and places that are social, cultural and/or political in nature. Her documentary essay films aspire to discover and create cinematic forms that embody the ideas they explore. Kissel’s research is in the field of documentary production where she works primarily as a single-camera operator in the observational and essay modes; she has expertise in directing, producing, videography/cinematography, and editing. In 2026-2027 Prof. Kissel is at work on The People’s House, a documentary essay film that considers the South Carolina State House as a living political organism, a place where citizens, legislators, lobbyists, protestors, and history converge in an ongoing negotiation over the meaning and practice of democracy.

Since her tenure at USC, Professor Kissel has received numerous fellowships and recognition for her work, including a Fulbright Research Fellowship (2009), a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2006), and funding from the South Carolina Humanities Council (2008) and the Fledgling Fund (2011), among others. In 2011 she was a Robert Flaherty Seminar Invited Artist; her short film tan mian hua 弹棉花 premiered at the Robert Flaherty Seminar that year, along with another documentary short, Window Cleaning in Shanghai. Her feature documentary Cotton Road (2014) about South Carolina’s global cotton supply chain received a national broadcast on PBS’s World Channel and distribution via NETA and SCETV’s program Reel South where it played in more than 75 national media markets. Cotton Road received a Southeastern Emmy Award nomination in 2017 and was recognized with eight juried film festival awards during its festival run between 2014-1016. Cotton Road is distributed by Documentary Educational Resources and has been collected by many libraries and universities.  

Academic Leadership 

Professor Kissel served as Director of the University of South Carolina School of Visual Art and Design (SVAD) from 2018 – 2025 and Interim Director of the Film and Media Studies Program (now merged with SVAD’s Film and Media program) from 2018-2020.  Kissel’s leadership strengthened the School of Visual Art and Design through faculty recruitment and retention, curriculum revision across multiple programs, and a successful self-study and re-accreditation process with the National Association of Schools of Art and Design undertaken in 2024-2025. Kissel also served as Director of the Film and Media Studies Program in 2010-2016. She is an alum of the SEC Academic Leadership Development Program (2019-2020) and USC’s Pipeline to Academic Leadership Program (2018-2019). Prof. Kissel’s service leadership was recognized with USC's Distinguished Research Service Award (2018) for her years long commitment to undergraduate research.  

Courses

FAME 201 Foundations of Media Arts Production  
FAME 371 The Moving Image  
SVAD 499 School of Visual Art and Design Internship 
FAME 572 Documentary Filmmaking  
FAME 701 The Role of Research in Media Arts Practice  
FAME 702 Graduate Media Workshop