Born and raised in Chicago -- with a decade-long detour in Saudi Arabia -- before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zaki Hasan is a professor of communication and media studies, and has been a media scholar and critic for more than 25 years. His film reviews and analyses have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and Philadelphia Weekly, as well as IGN, HuffPost, Fandor, and Sequart, and is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle and Hollywood Critics Association. He is co-host of the MovieFilm Podcast, co-author of Quirk Books' Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture, and has appeared as a panelist on Al Jazeera America's The Stream and HuffPost Live.