Charles Musser teaches courses on film and media historiography, American cinema and documentary film (both critical studies and production). His book The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (1990) received the Jay Leyda Prize in Cinema Studies, the Theater Library Association Award for best book on Film, TV and Radio, the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for outstanding book in Media Studies and other awards.
Professor Musser has also been active in Public Humanities. He is film historian for the Thomas A. Edison Papers. He is a founder and served as co-director of the 11-day New Haven Documentary Film Festival through its sixth 2019 iteration. He has curated and programmed shows at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the New-York Historical Society, UCLA Film and Television Archives, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (New Haven, CT) and the Giornate del Cinema Muto (Pordenone, Italy).