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Karl Precoda

A black and white still from a movie showing a man crawling over a railroad track while a locomotive heads down the track.

School of Performing Arts
251D Henderson Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540-231-5335 | karlp@vt.edu

Karl Precoda is Senior Instructor in Cinema Studies.  Karl is affiliated faculty with American Indian Studies, ASPECT, and Women's and Gender Studies.

Karl's courses explore oppositional cinema histories, including the avant-garde, experimental, and documentary traditions, as well as the production, exhibition, and consumption of images of Africana and indigenous peoples.

Karl also serves as a dramaturg on stage and screen productions.

  • Cinema History
  • Dramaturgy for stage and screen
  • Indigenous Studies
  • PhD, University of Virginia 
  • MA, Humboldt State University 
  • BA, University of California - Los Angeles
Dramaturgy for stage productions (selected)
  • The Cretans (Fall 2020)
  • Men On Boats (Spring 2022)
  • Macbeth the Murderer (Spring 2020)
  • The Santaland Diaries (Fall 2019)
  • [title of show] (Spring 2019)
  • Histoire du Soldat (+ co-director; Fall 2018)
  • Mr. Marmalade (Spring 2017)
  • Hotspur! (Spring 2016)
  • Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Fall 2015)
  • Fool for Love (Spring 2015)
  • Spring Awakening: The Musical (Spring 2014)
  • Three Days of Rain (Spring 2014)
  • Measure for Measure (Spring 2013)
  • Pinter Works (Fall 2012)
  • La Ronde (Spring 2012)
  • Twelfth Night (Fall 2011)
  • The Fantasticks (Spring 2011)
  • Persephone (Fall 2010)
  • You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (2010)

Films (selected)

  • Metamorphosis (co-producer, 2020)
  • Splits (associate producer, 2020)
  • Sundown (co-producer/cinematography, 2019)
  • East of Pulse (co-producer/cinematography, 2017)
  • Hysteresis of the Millennium (co-producer/cinematography, 2017)
  • An Index of Possibility (cinematography, 2017)
  • CLAHS Diversity Award, 2020
  • Presidential Principles of Community Award (with the Virginia Dares team), 2019
  • Diggs Teaching Scholar, 2005-06
  • CLAHS Certificate of Teaching Excellence, 2004
  • Cinema History
  • The Cinema Director
  • Avant-Garde and Experimental Cinema
  • Underground Cinema and Culture
  • Visual Ethnography and Documentary History
  • American Indians in Cinema
  • Black Film Before Spike Lee
  • Critical Indigenous Theory (graduate)