Alena Williams is an art historian and curator. She teaches film and media history and theory in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where she codirects the Discursive and Curatorial Productions initiative with Mariana Wardwell. Her research areas include: the history and theory of modern and contemporary art, media, and film; the epistemology of the image; and theories of modernity. She is the curator of Nancy Holt: Sightlines, an international traveling exhibition for the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University (2010–13), and she published a companion book with the University of California Press (2011). Williams has contributed to Artforum and Texte zur Kunst, and lectured and curated film screenings internationally, including: Zwischenakte: Three Passages in Cinema, at the Arsenal Cinema in collaboration with the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin, and Rutgers University (2011); Site Recordings: Land Art on Film and Video, at the Anthology Film Archives, New York (2010); and Light Is a Kind of Rhythm, a film program and book, at the Institut im Glaspavillon am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (2007–09).