John Belton

Biography

John Belton is Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Rutgers University. He is editor of the Film and Culture series at Columbia University Press and was former Chair of the Board of Editors of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He is the author of five books, including Widescreen Cinema (1992), winner of the 1993 Kraszna Krausz prize for books on the moving image, and American Cinema/American Culture (1994–2022), a textbook written to accompany the PBS series American Cinema. He earned his PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University and specializes in film history and cultural studies. Belton has served on the National Film Preservation Board and as Chair of the Archival Papers and Historical Committee of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In 2005/06, he was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue his study of the use of digital technology in the film industry.