Alyssa Lopez

Alyssa Lopez is a scholar of African American, urban, and cultural history. Her book, Reel Freedom: Black Film Culture in Early Twentieth Century New York City, is published with Temple University Press (April 2025). The book moves through the city’s earliest exhibition spaces for Black audiences, darkened theater seats, the cutting room floor of the state censorship board, to hidden projectionist booths, closing with the city’s Black weeklies and their brutal assessment of film’s potential -- all to detail how trace how ordinary people, labor activists, journalists, and filmmakers all shaped Black film culture, leveraging cinema to make the city their own and enjoy urban living to its fullest.

Her work has also appeared in The Journal of African American History, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, and The Routledge Companion to American Film History. She has also written work for public audiences in The Metropole, Women Film Pioneers Project, Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, and Black Perspectives. 

At PC, Lopez regularly teaches: Black Film History, The American Century, The Civil Rights Movement, and DWC 201.

Dr. Lopez is a native New Yorker, who grew up in Queens and attended CUNY, Queens College as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and Macaulay Honors Scholar. She earned her Ph.D. at Michigan State University, where she was a King-Chávez-Parks Future Faculty Fellow.