Ricky Herbst

Ricky Herbst serves as the university’s Cinema Program Director. His past work with series and festivals has focused on international queer cinema, New Jack cinema, historical depictions of labor, capital punishment, MENAT cinema, and forced migration. He graduated from Yale Law School, where he wrote on the interplay between labor, law, censorship, and film. After graduating from law school, he received his MPhil in Criminological Research as a Fox Fellow from the University of Cambridge with a dissertation on the censorship of spectacles.

At Notre Dame, the Moreau College Initiative/Westville Correctional Facility, John Cabot University, and Yale University, Ricky has taught courses on film theory, gender studies, the carceral state, and documentary films.

Ricky currently serves on the boards of Uzima! Drum and Dance Company, the South Bend Human Rights Commission, the Policing and Criminal Justice Reform Task Force of MAARPR, and the Yale Law School Executive Committee.