Dr. Todd Boyd, aka Notorious Ph.D., is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was a producer/co-writer on the Paramount Pictures celebrated cult classic The Wood (1999) and he has been a regular contributor to ESPN, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, HBO Sports, ESPN.com, Jim Rome on Showtime, and National Public Radio. A prominent media commentator, Dr. Boyd is well known for appearing in numerous documentaries including, Twenty Feet From Stardom (2013) winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He has also appeared in Trojan Wars (ESPN “30 For 30,” 2015), Fresh Dressed (2015), Richard Pryor: Icon (PBS, 2014), The Doctor (NBA TV, 2013), The Godfather Legacy (History Channel, 2012), Uprising: Hip Hop and the LA Riots (VH1, 2012), and The Running Rebels of UNLV (HBO, 2011) among many other documentaries. His body of work also includes seven books and over one hundred articles, essays, reviews, and other forms of written commentary. Dr. Boyd provided the voice over for the 2014 Beats By Dre Super Bowl commercial “Richard Sherman: The Pundits,” and in September 2015 he hosted “An Evening with Denzel Washington: In Conversation With Dr. Todd Boyd” at the Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.

Ken Burns has been making documentary films for more than 35 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated BROOKLYN BRIDGE in 1981, he has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. His next film, JACKIE ROBINSON, will air on PBS on April 11 and 12, 2016.

Burns was the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of the landmark television series THE CIVIL WAR. The series has been honored with more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Producer of the Year Award from the Producer’s Guild, a People’s Choice Award, a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, a D.W. Griffiths Award and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others.

Some of Burns’s other films include THE ROOSEVELTS (2014), THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE (2013), THE DUST BOWL (2012), PROHIBITION (2011), THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEA (2009), THE WAR (2007), co-directed with Lynn Novick, JAZZ (2001), LEWIS AND CLARK: THE JOURNEY OF THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY (1997) and BASEBALL (1994)

Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. He graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1975.