Film historian Joshua Schulze of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film helps students look past the screen to understand the people and labor that make filmmaking possible
Joshua Schulze | Credit: Kiarra Ruff
By Hoku Tiwanak, CLA Student Writer - April 28, 2026
In the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Research Center, Joshua Schulze found himself drawn to a collection of materials from the 1941 film Citizen Kane. While examining reshoots of the film’s final scene, he noticed laborers were labeled not by name, but by nationality, identified simply as “Mexican.”
The discovery sparked Schulze's curiosity. Why were the people contributing to the back end of films reduced to categories, while others were celebrated as individuals?
Now an Assistant Professor of Teaching in OSU’s School of Writing, Literature, and Film, Schulze studies the relationship between race, labor, and material resources in media production. His work challenges the way audiences traditionally understand film, not only as a piece of entertainment, but as the product of a complex system of labor.
Growing up between South Africa and the United Kingdom, he spent much of his time watching films and collecting physical media. “In the UK, my friends and I would go into stores and collect DVDs and Blu-rays,” he said. “The ‘world cinema’ section was a wide variety of films from different cultures thrown into one bin. That made me curious.”
After completing his master’s degree in the UK, Schulze realized that traditional approaches to film studies, focused on close readings of scenes and texts, only told part of the story. “There’s a whole world of research out there that’s much more active and travel-based,” he said.
Seeking more research opportunities, he moved to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Access to archives and production materials allowed him to build a research project about the conditions that make films possible. “Once I got a taste of studying film from that perspective, I wanted to keep exploring,” he said.
Schulze’s research focuses on Hollywood during World War II, a period when the film industry faced labor shortages, material restrictions, and shifting production practices. His work examines how studios adapted, often relying on racialized and marginalized labor to sustain production.
One example being the 1942 war film Wake Island, produced just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. With Japanese-American actors incarcerated in internment camps, studios turned to Filipino laborers to portray Japanese soldiers on screen.
“Filipino workers, many of whom had their own political tensions with Japan, were asked to play the enemy,” Schulze explained. “Some would intentionally disrupt scenes, derailing production as a form of political expression.”
Stories like this highlight the disconnect between Hollywood filmmakers and the diverse communities they depend on, exposing a lack of awareness of cultural distinctions and lived experiences.
“There’s a tendency to view Hollywood as a dream factory,” he said. “But it’s an industry like any other that's driven by labor and materials.”
During World War II, production began to move beyond centralized studio systems due to labor strikes and material shortages. That shift laid the groundwork for today’s globalized film industry.
“Hollywood is no longer just a geographical place,” he said. “Production is outsourced, visual effects, camera work, technical labor, it’s happening all over the world.”
This decentralization has made labor even more difficult to trace. “What you see on screen is possible because of a chain of labor that’s designed not to be thought about,” he said.
Schulze brings these ideas into the classroom, encouraging students to rethink not just what they watch, but where it comes from.
One of the key tools he uses is audiovisual essays, a format that allows students to analyze film using the medium itself. “For most of film history, it’s been difficult to write about moving images,” he said. “Audiovisual essays let you work directly with the material, using clips, voiceover, and editing to make your argument.”
This approach not only deepens analysis but also equips students with practical skills in media production. “They’re making media while still engaging with critical ideas,” he said.
For Schulze, the goal of his work is to change how people engage with media altogether. “Film is an industrial product; it’s the result of a series of labor decisions.”
“It’s about understanding what’s on your screen and how it got there,” he said. Beyond the credits, beyond the stars, and beyond the final cut, every film carries the imprint of the people who made it, whether their names appear on screen or not.