His teaching focuses on Film and Digital Media. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2010, where he was affiliated with the Department of Comparative Literature. His dissertation, ÒAn Investigative Cinema: Politics and Modernization in Italian, French and American Film,Ó was awarded a Research Fellowship at the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and a Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship. A native of Italy, Cilento completed his undergraduate studies in Drama at the University of Florence.