Jason Davids Scott earned his Ph.D. in Theatre in 2009 at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he also earned an M.A. with honors in 2004.   As a director at UCSB, he created and advised many student-based improvisational groups, as well as acting and directing in several local and mainstage productions.  He was also the administrative director of the Michael Howard Studios in New York.  Currently, Dr. Scott is the Film Studies and Sexuality/Erotica Area Chair for the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association (MAPACA), where he also serves as Vice-President of Publications.  He is currently overseeing the development of MAPACA's new online, peer-reviewed, open source website.

Prior to graduate school, Jason graduated with a B.F.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he received the George Amberg Memorial Award for Undergraduate Achievement and the Founder's Day Award for academic excellence.  He then established a career a film publicist and development executive in both Los Angeles and New York, working for Castle Rock Entertainment and later actress/producer Helen Hunt.

Dr. Scott was a lecturer at ASU from 2009-2011, where he served as the Coordinator for Curricular Revision for the School of Theatre and Film.  He also coached and performed with the student group Spot Improv and received a certificate of recognition from the ASU Disabilities Resource Center.  From 2011-2013, Jason was an assistant professor at the School of Theatre at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.  While there, he directed several original plays by the student groups The (New) Original Cast and Fredonia Players, helped launch the student group Improv Strikes Back, and taught classes in Acting, History of Cinema, Play Analysis, and Theatre Appreciation.  He directed the Summer Repertory production "Steel Magnolias" and the Mainstage production of Charles Mee's "bobrauschenbergamerica," and appeared as an actor and musician in the productions "Three Sisters" and "Charlotte's Web."  He also delivered workshops at the Texas Educational Theatre Association (TETA) annual conference in 2012 and 2013.  He has also previously delivered presentations at conferences hosted by the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) and the American Society for Theatrical Research (ASTR).

Dr. Scott's past publications include articles in the Mid-Atlantic Almanck; the online journal Otherness: Essays and Studies; and reviews in the Journal of Popular Culture and the Mid-Atlantic Almanack.  He contributed to the recent collection The Films of Wes Anderson:  Critical Essays on a Indiewood Icon, and wrote the artist profiles for Monologues for Latino/a Actors, edited by Micha Espinosa and published by Smith and Kraus.  Fall of 2014 saw the publication of Robert Downey Jr. From Brat to Icon, which features a chapter about Downey's work immediately after drug rehab.  2015 will see the publication of the Cambridge World Encyclopedia of Actors and Acting, which features several dozen entries by Dr. Scott.  He is currently developing an article about the early works of film director Hal Hartley; and co-editing a collection called Pretty in Kink:  Culture, Theory, Sex, Kink.  

Dr. Scott continues to serve as a freelance publicity and marketing consultant for entertainment firms in both Los Angeles and New York, and has created marketing materials for over 200 film projects and individual clients, and served as the unit publicist on films such as "Dazed and Confused," "The Crow," and "Party Girl." 

At Arizona State University, Dr. Scott currently teaches required undergraduate courses in Theatre History and Ethics Survey: Sex and Violence in Cinema.  He has also taught several courses in film and television history, developed the Herberger online course "Great Movie Musicals, and created the course FMP 330 (Professional and Technical Writing for Film/Media Industries).  He is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Film, Media, and Popular Culture.  On stage he appeared in the ASU production "shallow grave" in fall 2014, and he continues to serve the extended Arizona community as an adjudicator and respondent for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.  To relax, he umpires Little League Baseball for Arizona Little League District 13.