Laura Kissel is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and media artist whose work has been screened at film festivals and broadcast on public television. She was named the South Carolina Arts Commission’s Media Arts Fellow for 2007-2008 and has received numerous fellowships and grants for her work including a Fulbright Award (2009), a MacDowell Fellowship (2006), and funding from the South Carolina Humanities Council (2003 and 2008). Her educational travelogue documentary Beyond the Classroom: China (2007) was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle and 3 Telly Awards in 2008. Cabin Field, a non-fiction essay film, was honored with three festival awards including the Jurors’ Citation Award at the 2006 Black Maria Film and Video Festival. Kissel has also published articles in academic journals, more recently in the Journal of Visual Culture on the subject of the long take; and an essay on the representation of disability was published in 2009 in the book Filming Difference (University of Texas Press). She is currently at work on a documentary about globalization and cotton.