​ABIGAIL SEVERANCE

ABIGAIL SEVERANCE teaches directing, visual design and critical seminars in the CalArts MFA Film Directing Program and was Associate Dean of the School of Film/Video from 2012-2016. She previously taught in the UC San Diego Visual Arts Department.

Severance has an MFA in Film Directing from UCLA, where she was a Wasserman Fellow and received the Carl David Award for LBGT Filmmakers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award and the Spotlight Directing Award in 2003 and 2004. She is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar (Ireland 2020), earned a BA in Cultural Studies from Hampshire College and studied in Nicaragua in 1989, the last year of the Sandinista government. She received Hampshire's Threshold Award for scholarly research with her paper on representations of violence in Colombia during La Violencia and the drug wars of the 1980s.

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Severance worked as a camera assistant and camera operator in the film industry before making her own films and teaching.​