Murphy received her B.A. in Art History from the University of Rochester and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California , Irvine . She has worked as the Assistant Director of the UC-Irvine Film & Video Center and served on the Society for Cinema and Media Studies' information technology committee. She is currently working on a book-length study of the emergence of online images, entitled View-masters, Doodles, and Devices: The Emergence of Internet Visuality.