AHMED TAHSIN SHAMS
I’m Ahmed Tahsin Shams, a PhD candidate in Media Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. My research interests span elemental realism, eco-doc aesthetics and pedagogy, and creative storytelling practices in the (post)Anthropocene.
Earlier, I worked as an instructor at the University of Chicago (2024–2025) and as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Notre Dame (2021–2023). Currently, I serve as a co-curator of the City Lights Film Series at IU Bloomington and co-director of the In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (2026), supported by CDRP. Moreover, I worked as an assistant editor for Black Camera: An International Film Journal from June 2024 to August 2025. In the past, I served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Notre Dame University Bangladesh from 2016 to 2022.
My recent publication titles are “Wavewritten Inquiry: Hydrocritical Aesthetics in Are You Listening! and Ophelia’s Got Talent,” Transpositiones: Journal for Transdisciplinary and Intermedial Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2025, University of Warsaw); “Silence and Soil as Sensory Archives in Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” IU Cinema’s AfroFutures: Black Women and Cinematic Storytelling program, IU Cinema Journal; “Ecofeminist Sensorium Mise-en-scène in The Scent of Green Papaya,” The Journal of Film and Video 78, no. 3, University of Illinois Press (forthcoming); and “Publishing with Tree-Media: Arbo-real Aesthetics, Pedagogical Ruptures,” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies 16, no. 1, University of Alberta Press, Canada [forthcoming].
At the moment, my ongoing film projects include: The Water Readers (2026) and Lotus in the Wasterland (2026). My hybrid documentary productions are Truth, Power, and Freedom (11 mins, 2025, winner of Best Documentary Award at Montage Film Festival 2024, IU; Official Selection: Charlotte Black Film Festival 2025), Cogito, Ergo Sum (11 mins, 2025), and Listen (52 mins, 2024). My earlier cinematic productions include Arshinagar (Reflection, 52 mins, Bangladesh, 2022), a transcreation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, available on Amazon Prime Video.
Earlier, I worked as an instructor at the University of Chicago (2024–2025) and as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Notre Dame (2021–2023). Currently, I serve as a co-curator of the City Lights Film Series at IU Bloomington and co-director of the In Light Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (2026), supported by CDRP. Moreover, I worked as an assistant editor for Black Camera: An International Film Journal from June 2024 to August 2025. In the past, I served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Notre Dame University Bangladesh from 2016 to 2022.
My recent publication titles are “Wavewritten Inquiry: Hydrocritical Aesthetics in Are You Listening! and Ophelia’s Got Talent,” Transpositiones: Journal for Transdisciplinary and Intermedial Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2025, University of Warsaw); “Silence and Soil as Sensory Archives in Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” IU Cinema’s AfroFutures: Black Women and Cinematic Storytelling program, IU Cinema Journal; “Ecofeminist Sensorium Mise-en-scène in The Scent of Green Papaya,” The Journal of Film and Video 78, no. 3, University of Illinois Press (forthcoming); and “Publishing with Tree-Media: Arbo-real Aesthetics, Pedagogical Ruptures,” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies 16, no. 1, University of Alberta Press, Canada [forthcoming].
At the moment, my ongoing film projects include: The Water Readers (2026) and Lotus in the Wasterland (2026). My hybrid documentary productions are Truth, Power, and Freedom (11 mins, 2025, winner of Best Documentary Award at Montage Film Festival 2024, IU; Official Selection: Charlotte Black Film Festival 2025), Cogito, Ergo Sum (11 mins, 2025), and Listen (52 mins, 2024). My earlier cinematic productions include Arshinagar (Reflection, 52 mins, Bangladesh, 2022), a transcreation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, available on Amazon Prime Video.
