Education
- Ph.D., English. SUNY at Buffalo, Spring 1981
- M.A., Writing Seminars, The Johns Hopkins University, 1977
- B.A., University of Notre Dame, 1975
Biography
Scholarly Focus
- Film (noir, melodrama, gangster film, Hollywood musical)
- Music (pop, jazz, classical)
- Media (TV, video)
- Popular-cultural studies
Publications
Books
I Died a Million Times: Gangster Noir in Midcentury America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021). 269 pp.
The Red and the Black: American Film Noir in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017). 284 pp.
Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, February, 2011. 300 pp.
Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). 262 pp.
From Hegel to Madonna: Towards a General Economy of 鈥淐ommodity Fetishism鈥 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 224 pp.
Books: Edited Collections
Kiss the Blood off My Hands: Re-Screening Classic American Film Noir.
Psycho-Marxism: Marxism and Psycho-Analysis Late in the Twentieth Century, ed. Robert
Miklitsch (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). 280 pp.
Book Chapters
鈥淐ine-Telescopic Psyche: 1950s Serial Killers and Sexual Psycho Pathology in The Sniper and While the City Sleeps,鈥 Mind Reeling: Psychopathology on Screen, ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020), 101-127.
鈥淩ocking Around the Clock: Jailhouse Rock, A Hard Day鈥檚 Night, and the 鈥楯ukebox鈥 Biopic,鈥 A Companion to the Biopic, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 353-374.
鈥溾楨asy Living鈥: From The Price of Salt (78) to Carol (EP),鈥 ed. Wieland Schwanabeck and Douglas McFarland, Highsmith on Screen (forthcoming: London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 159-174.
鈥淛azz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn,鈥 The Many Lives of Michael Curtiz, ed. Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 145-157.
鈥淭he Rogue Cop Film: Theft, Adaptation, and Prototypicality in Where the Sidewalk Ends,鈥 Film Noir Prototypes: Origins of the Movement, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause/Hal Leonard, 2018), 300-319.
鈥淩ogue Nation, 1954: William McGivern, Class Consciousness, and the 鈥楻ogue Cop鈥 Film,鈥 Emerging American Genres in the Cold War Era, ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 99-122.
鈥淗ollywood Noir: Scripting the Death of Romance in Sunset Blvd. and In a Lonely Place,鈥 Film Noir: Light and Shadow颅, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause, 2017): 152-170.
鈥淪plit/Screen: Sound/Source Music in The Stranger/Criss Cross,鈥 Film Noir: The Classic Tradition, ed. R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Fall 2014): 122-142.
鈥淧eriodizing Classic Noir: From Stranger on the Third Floor to the 鈥楾hrillers of Tomorrow,鈥欌 Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 193-218.
鈥淏ack to Black: 鈥楥rime Melodrama,鈥 Docu-Melo-Noir, and the 鈥楻ed Menace鈥 Film,鈥 Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 1-16.
鈥淎udio-Noir: Audiovisuality in Neo-Modernist Noir,鈥 Neo-Noir, ed. Mark Bould et. Al (London, UK: Wallflower Press, 2009): 28-43.
鈥淩eal Fantasies: Connie Stevens, Silencio, and Other Sonic Phenomena in Mulholland Drive,鈥 Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound, ed. Jay Beck and Anthony Grajeda (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008): 233-248.
鈥淔lesh for Fantasy: Aesthetics, the Fantasmatic, and Film Noir,鈥 Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavoj Zizek, ed. Geoff Boucher et al. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005): 17-39
鈥淏eginnings and Endings: Mark Strand鈥檚 鈥楿ntelling,鈥欌 Poetry Criticism, ed. Larry Trudeau Detroit: Gale, 2005): 29-42 [reprint].
鈥淒ifference: Roland Barthes鈥 Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,鈥 Roland Barthes, ed. Mike Gane and Nicholas Gane (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 557-570 [reprint].
鈥淎ssembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Gl眉ck,鈥 The Twayne Companion to Literature in English, ed. R.H.W. Dillard and Amanda Cockrell (New York: Twayne, 2003): 347-360 [reprint].
鈥淭he Politics of Teaching Literature,鈥 Beyond the Corporate University, ed. Henry Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001): 267-285 [reprint].
鈥淧unk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,鈥 Education and Cultural Studies: Toward a Performative Practice, ed. Henry Giroux and Patrick Shannon (New York: Routledge, 1997): 259-270 [reprint].
鈥淣ews from Somewhere: Reading Raymond Williams鈥 Readers,鈥 Cultural Materialism, ed. Christopher Prendergast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995): 71-90.
鈥淭he Politics of Teaching Literature,鈥 Margins in the Classroom: Teaching Literature, ed. Kostas and Linda Myrsiades (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 71-90 [reprint].
鈥淕odard/Auden/Martini: Framing the Annunciation Scene,鈥 Perspectives on Perception: Philosophy, Art, and Literature, ed. Mary Ann Caws (New York: Peter Lang, 1989): 95-122.
鈥淚ncognito Lounge,鈥 Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Maturz (Detroit: Gale, 1989): 567-571 [reprint].
Articles
鈥Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, and the 鈥榃oman in Red,鈥欌 Mystery Tribune 3 (Fall 2017): 119-129. 鈥淭he Red and the Black: Gender, Genre, and the Romance of (Anti- ) Communism in The Woman on Pier 13,鈥 Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, Media Studies 29, 3 (Fall 2014): 127-147.
鈥淧ink Is the New Black: 50s Color Noir, the 鈥楩atal Man,鈥 and the 鈥楩emme鈥 Detective in A Kiss before Dying,鈥 Popular Culture Review 25, 2 (Summer 2014): 95-107.
鈥淔ear of a Red Planet: I Was a Communist for the FBI as 鈥楤lack Film,鈥欌 Journal of Popular Film and Television 41, 1 (2013): 43-54.
鈥淎udiophilia: Audiovisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Jackie Brown,鈥 Screen 45, No. 4 (Winter 2004): 287-304.
鈥淪hot/Counter-Shot: Gender, Sexuality, and Postmodern Style in The Sopranos,鈥 New Review of Film and Television Studies 2, No. 2 (November, 2004): 16-29.
鈥淕en-X TV: Political-Libidinal Structures of Feeling in Melrose Place,鈥 Journal of Film and Video 55, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 16-29.
鈥淶izek and Popular Culture: Art for Lacan鈥檚 Sake,鈥 Journal of Advanced Composition 21, No. 3 (Summer 2001): 605-612.
鈥淩ock 鈥榥鈥 Theory: Theory, Autobiography, Cultural Studies, and the Death of Rock,鈥 Postmodern Culture 9, No. 2 (January 1999): [27 pp].
鈥泪苍迟谤辞诲耻肠迟颈辞苍,鈥 Marxism and Psychoanalysis Late in the Twentieth Century, South Atlantic Quarterly 97, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 227-234.
鈥溾楪oing through the Fantasy鈥: Screening Slavoj Zizek,鈥 South Atlantic Quarterly 97, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 475-507.
鈥淭he Commodity-Body-Sign: Toward a General Economy of 鈥楥ommodity Fetishism,鈥欌 Cultural Critique 33 (Spring 1996): 5-40.
鈥淭he Rhetoric of Post-Marxism: Discourse and Institutionality,鈥 Social Text 45 (Winter 1995): 165-199.
鈥淭otal Recall: Production, Revolution, Simulation Alienation-Effect,鈥 Camera Obscura 32 (Summer 1995): 5-40.
鈥淪turm und Searle: Intervention, Transformation, Democratization,鈥 Mediations 16, No. 2 (May 1992): 24-29.
鈥淭roping Prostitution: Two or Three Things about Post-Marxism and Feminism,鈥 Genders 12 (Winter 1991): 120-139.
鈥淧erforming Difference: Brecht, Galileo, and the 鈥楻egime of Quotations,鈥欌 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6, No. 1 (Fall 1991): 15-28.
鈥淭he Politics of Teaching Literature: The 鈥楶aedagogical Effect,鈥欌 College Literature 17, Numbers 2/3 (June/October 1990): 23-35.
鈥淭he Poppies of Practical Criticism: 鈥楻abbi, Read the Phases of This Difference,鈥欌 Diacritics 17, No. 2 (Summer 1987): 23-35.
鈥淭he Critic as Poet, Poet as Critic: Randall Jarrell, Deconstruction, and 鈥楧irty Silence,鈥欌 American Poetry 1, No. 2 (Winter 1984): 35-48.
鈥淒ifference: Roland Barthes鈥 Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,鈥 Boundary 2, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Fall 1983): 101-114.
鈥淎ssembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Gl眉ck,鈥 The Hollins Critic 19, No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.
鈥淧raise: The Poetry of Robert Hass,鈥 The Hollins Critic 19, No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.
鈥淯t Pictura Poesis: Reduction in Contemporary American Painting and Poetry,鈥 The American Poetry Review 9, No. 6 (Winter1980): 18-32.
鈥溾楢 Postcard from the Volcano鈥: An Appreciation,鈥 The Wallace Stevens Journal 3, Numbers 戮 (Spring 1979): 36-40.
鈥淏eginnings and Endings: Mark Strand鈥檚 鈥楿ntelling,鈥欌 The Literary Review 21, No. 3 (Spring 1979): 357-373.
Review Essays
鈥淟ust, Fantasy, Male Hysteria: Clint Eastwood (Un-) Bound,鈥 Minnesota Review 43/44 (Fall 1995): 118-135.
鈥淧unk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risk and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,鈥 The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 16, No. 1 (1994): 57-67.
鈥淭he Language of Literary History: Dead or Alive?,鈥 The Yale Review 77, No. 1 (Autumn 1987): 103-114.
鈥淣ews from Somewhere: On Raymond Williams,鈥 Textual Practice 6, No. 1 (Spring 1992): 67-78.
鈥淪elf-Portrait in a Convex Mirror鈥 (on John Ashbery), Contemporary Literature 21, No. 3 (Spring 1980): 118-135.
Reviews
鈥淐ommentary: 鈥楽uffering in Rhythm: The Haunting Melody of Film Noir,鈥 [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies 5, 2 (Summer 2018): 7-10. .
鈥淒ashiell Hammett and Classical Hollywood Cinema,鈥 Literature/Film Quarterly 43, 3 (Summer 2015): 236-240.
鈥The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism,鈥 Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and History 43, No. 2 (Fall 2013): 80-83.
鈥淔ilm Noir鈥 (on Raymond Borde and 脡tienne Chaumeton鈥檚 Panorama of American Film Noir and Paula Rabinowitz鈥檚 Black & White & Noir), Film Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 2004): 66-68.
鈥淔rom Classic Rock to Gangsta Rap鈥 (on Anthony DeCurtis鈥 Rocking My Life Away), Southern Review 33, No. 1 (Fall 2000): 117-120.
鈥淓xotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said and Spivak鈥 (Asha Varadharajan), Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 43 (1996 [1995]): 144-148.
鈥淭he Incognito Lounge鈥 (Dennis Johnson), The Iowa Review 13, Numbers 3/4 (1982/83): 246-250.
Sidebars
鈥淒ashiell Hammett,鈥 Books to Film: Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Works, Vol. 1, ed. Keith Barry Grant (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2017).
Papers/Presentations
鈥淭he Rhetoric of Rape: Sexual Violence in Roman Polanski鈥檚 1970s Films in the #MeToo Era,鈥 International Conference on Communication, Film, and Media (New York: NY: April 23-24, 2020 [accepted/conference cancelled]).
鈥淩ipley in Italy: Visual Culture and Musical Counterpoint in Anthony Minghella鈥檚 Talented Mr. Ripley,鈥 4th International Conference on Visual Culture, Pontificia Universit脿 della Santa Croce (Rome, Italy: May 2108)
鈥淛azz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn,鈥 Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School, New York University (New York, NY: May 2017).
鈥淥dds for Tomorrow: Race, Melo-Policier, and the Trope of Oriental Inscrutability in Samuel Fuller鈥檚 The Crimson Kimono,鈥 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Atlanta, GA: March, 2016).
鈥淩esearch,鈥 Edgar Allan Poe Symposium, Mystery Writers of America (New York, NY: April 29, 2015).
鈥淎tomic 鈥楥owboys鈥 and Un-American 鈥業ndians鈥: 50s Noir, Nuclear Espionage, and Anti-Communism in The Atomic City,鈥 Annual Conference, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (Chicago, IL: March 2104).
鈥淭echnicolor Noir: Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, and the 鈥榃oman in Red,鈥欌 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March, 2013).
鈥淭he Red and the Black: Chiaroscuro and HUAC, Bad Blondes and Flower Carriers in I Married a Communist,鈥 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boston, MA: March, 2012).
鈥淗ouse Sound: Reverb, Voice-Over, and Off-Screen Sound in Early RKO Film Noir,鈥 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Los Angeles, CA: March 2010).
鈥淎udio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,鈥 Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: July 2008)
鈥淎udio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,鈥 Humanities Center, Otterbein College (Westerville, OH: October 25, 2007).
鈥淪oundscape, Sound Space: Jive, Hepcats, and the Tutti Frutti Hat in Phantom Lady,鈥 In a Man鈥檚 World: Women in Classical Hollywood, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March 2007).
鈥淣oir/Musical: Gene Kelly, Cover Girl, and the Pierrot Noir,鈥 Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: June/July 2006).
鈥溾極nce More with Feeling鈥: Music, Adorno, and the Magic Spell of Lesbian Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer,鈥 Institute for Culture and Society, Georgetown University (Washington, DC: June 2005).
"Retro-Pastiche or Hollywood Critique?: David Lynch's Mulholland Drive," Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: July 2004).
"Flesh for Fantasy: Zizek, Film Noir, and the Frame of Fantasy,鈥 Reading Zizek, Reading Film, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Minneapolis, MN: March 2003).
"Bada Bing! Sex, Death, and Gangsta Psychoanalysis in The Sopranos," The New Quality Television: HBO Original Programming, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Studies (Denver, CO: May 2002).
"Queer Surplus-Value: The Talented Mr. Ripley," Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Washington, D.C.: May 2001).
Chair: The Pleasure Principle: Camp, Kitsch, Audio-Scopophilia and Other Pleasures, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March 2000).
"Cin茅-Audio-Scopophilia: Audiovisual Pleasure and Contemporary Narrative Film," The Pleasure Principle, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago: March 2000).
"Post-Post-Grand Theory: Suture, Screen, and the Future of Cinema Studies," The Production of Theory, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boca Raton, FL: April 1999).
Chair: Fantasy, Special Session, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1999).
"Vox Rock Theory: Rock Music in the Discourse of Cultural Studies," The New Rock Writing, Modern Language Association (Toronto, Canada: December 1997).
"Out of the Past: Psycho-Historicism," Psychoanalysis and Social Change (Washington, D.C.: November 1997).
"Back to the Future?: Screen, 鈥楾he Suture Scenario,' and the Futurity of Film Theory," Whither Film Theory?, Modern Language Association (Washington, DC: December 1996).
"顿茅肠辞耻辫补驳别 MTV: Cinema, Music Television, and the Postmodern Real," Teaching Film Theory in the Age of MTV, Modern Language Association (Washington, DC: December 1996).
"Vicissitudes of Verfallsgeschichte: bell hooks on Madonna in Black & White," Psychoanalysis and Race, Psychoanalysis and Social Change (Washington, DC: November, 1996).
"On Popular Music: From Adorno to the Clash," Institute for Culture and Society, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA: June 1996).
Chair: Crypto-Male Males: Cinematic Masculinities in the 1990s, Special Session, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1995).
"Bell Curves and Idiots Savants: Ideologies of Masculinity in Forrest Gump," Crypto-Male Males, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1995).
"Hegemony of X: Social and Political Economy in Melrose Place," Western Humanities, Pedagogy, & the Public Sphere, Cultural Studies Symposium (Manhattan, Kansas: March 1995).
"鈥楪oing Through the Fantasy鈥: Introducing Slavoj Zizek," Institute for Culture and Society, Trinity College (Hartford, CT: June 1994).
Chair: Psycho-Marxism: From A(lthusser) to Z(izek), Special Session, Modern Language Association (Toronto, Canada: December 1993).
"Total Recall: Production, Revolution, Simulation Alienation-Effect," Institute for Culture and Society, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA: June 1993).
"Prise de Position: The Place and Present Future of the History of Literary Theory," Rethinking the History of Literary Theory, Midwest Modern Language Association (St. Louis, MO: November 1992).
"Battle of the Post-Moderns," Marxism and the New World Order: Crisis and Possibilities (Amherst, MA: November 1992).
"Commodity Fetishism: Freud, Marx, and Warhol's Sticky Fingers," Institute for Culture and Society, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA: June 1992).
"Punk Pedagogy: The Risks and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference," The Classroom: Political or Politicized?, College English Association of 红杏视频 (Columbus, OH: April 1992).
"Sturm und Searle: Intervention, Transformation, Democratization," Under Pressure: Political Intervention in the Academy, Modern Language Association (San Francisco, CA: December 1991).
"Resisting Negation: The Work of Affirmation" (extended version), Problems of Affirmation in Cultural Theory, The Society for Critical Exchange (Cleveland, OH: October 1991).
"Resisting Negation: The Work of Affirmation," Problems of Affirmation in Cultural Theory, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1990).
"The Origin and Economy of Cultural Studies: Reading Raymond Williams," Crossing the Disciplines: Cultural Studies in the 1990s (Norman, Oklahoma: October 1990).
"Political Literacy: E.D. Hirsch, The Black Panthers, and the 'Paedagogical Effect,'" The Role of Theory in the Undergraduate Classroom: Curriculum, Pedagogy, Politics (Indiana, PA: September 1990).
"Capitalism-as-Prostitution: Marx/Engels, 'Crude Communism,' and the 'Community of Women,'" Capitalism and Psychoanalysis: The 19th Century and After, Conference on Feminism and Representation (Providence, RI: April 1989).
"Reading Differently: Galileo in Quotations," (Re)Presenting Brecht: Poststructural Readings, International Brecht Society, Modern Language Association (San Francisco, CA: December 1987).
鈥淐apitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism,鈥 Marxism and Literature, Northeast Modern Language Association (Boston, MA: April 1987).
鈥'Capitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism': Re-Marx on Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory,鈥Ideologies of Modernism (West Chester, PA: October 1986).