Peter Britos PH.D.
College of Liberal Arts - Department of Arts, Communications, Languages, and Media
PROGRAM CHAIR FOR CINEMATIC MULTIMEDIA ARTS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Graduate University Ph.D., Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (USC) M.F.A., Screenwriting, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (USC)
Undergraduate University B.A., English, University of Hawai'i-Manoa
Affiliate University Certificates, French Literature, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland AA, Leeward Community College, Pearl City, O'ahu
Peter Britos, Ph.D. is a Professor at Hawaiʻi Pacific University (HPU) in downtown Honolulu, and Program Chair of the Cinematic Multimedia Arts Program. At HPU he teaches Global Cinema, Global Media Studies, Creative Narrative Production, Global Documentary, Feature Film Screenwriting, Cinematography, and Photography, amongst other courses.
Dr. Britos has taught cinematic and media studies at HPU, the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), the University of California Santa Barbara Film Studies Department, and at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa (UHM). He is the recipient of the FINE Fellowship for Gigapixel Photography from Carnegie Mellon University, the Walt Disney-Hollywood Pictures Fellowship Writers Award for Feature Film Screenwriting, the inaugural USC-SCA Postdoctoral Fellowship in Critical Studies & Pedagogy, and the HPU Golden Apple Distinguished Teaching Award.
Dr. Britos has a rich media industry background. In Maria Del Rey he served as a Writer-Consultant on the Concept Development and Visualization team at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. In Burbank, he wrote and produced syndicated radio as Executive Vice President of Production and Development at the Clear Channel Communications hub for Dees Entertainment. At the dual-broadcasting NBC affiliate station KHNL-KFVE-TV in Honolulu, he was the broadcast industry’s first Media Manager at the first all-digital newsroom in the world. At CBS Television City in Los Angeles, he produced music artists, actors, and other celebrities for Quincy Jones and David Salzman on VIBE-TV. Segments he wrote and produced include Ice Cube, Master P., Jon Voight, Robert Duvall, Enrique Iglesias, Pamela Lee Anderson, Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne, Carmen Electra, Maureen McCormick, Jennifer Grey, Yo Yo Ma, Cypress Hill, Kevin Bacon, Chow Yun Fat, Hilary Swank, Jon Stewart, Michael Moore, Robert Forster, the Harlem Globetrotters, Kobe Bryant, Oscar De La Hoya, and many more.
Britos is a novelist, screenwriter, filmmaker, painter and designer. His work is rooted in his Hawaiian and island culture. Traditional and contemporary visual design and narrative projects blend to create rich historical, poetic and futuristic tapestries.
His speculative fiction/sci-fi novel Valley of Spiraling Winds is published by University of Hawaiʻi Press (2025), and his coming-of-age independent feature film House of the Shark premieres in 2026.
Of his novel, UHM Professor Emeritus Paul Lyons writes: “This work by Peter Britos is some of the most interesting extrapolative fiction written in and about Hawaiʻi to date—a truly exceptional, outsized, audacious, brilliant piece of writing, on the imaginative and conceptual scale of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas or William Gibson’s Neuromancer.”
· Valley of Spiraling Winds https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/valley-of-spiraling-winds/
· House of the Shark https://www.instagram.com/houseoftheshark/
