Recent News
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
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 “Commodity Fetishism” (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
“Cine-Telescopic Psyche: 1950s Serial Killers and Sexual Psycho Pathology in The Sniper and While the City Sleeps ,” Mind Reeling: Psychopathology on Screen , ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020), 101-127.
“Rocking Around the Clock: Jailhouse Rock , A Hard Day’s Night , and the ‘Jukebox’ Biopic,” A Companion to the Biopic , ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 353-374.
“‘Easy Living’: From The Price of Salt (78) to Carol (EP),” ed. Wieland Schwanabeck and Douglas McFarland, Highsmith on Screen (forthcoming: London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 159-174.
“Jazz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn ,” The Many Lives of Michael Curtiz , ed. Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 145-157.
“The Rogue Cop Film: Theft, Adaptation, and Prototypicality in Where the Sidewalk Ends ,” Film Noir Prototypes: Origins of the Movement , ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause/Hal Leonard, 2018), 300-319.
“Rogue Nation, 1954: William McGivern, Class Consciousness, and the ‘Rogue Cop’ Film,” Emerging American Genres in the Cold War Era , ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 99-122.
“Hollywood Noir: Scripting the Death of Romance in Sunset Blvd. and In a Lonely Place ,” Film Noir: Light and Shadow , ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause, 2017): 152-170.
“Split/Screen: Sound/Source Music in The Stranger / Criss Cross ,” Film Noir: The Classic Tradition , ed. R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Fall 2014): 122-142.
“Periodizing Classic Noir: From Stranger on the Third Floor to the ‘Thrillers of Tomorrow,’” Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 193-218.
“Back to Black: ‘Crime Melodrama,’ Docu-Melo-Noir, and the ‘Red Menace’ Film,” Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 1-16.
“Audio-Noir: Audiovisuality in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Neo-Noir , ed. Mark Bould et. Al (London, UK: Wallflower Press, 2009): 28-43.
“Real Fantasies: Connie Stevens, Silencio, and Other Sonic Phenomena in Mulholland Drive,” Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound , ed. Jay Beck and Anthony Grajeda (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008): 233-248.
“Flesh for Fantasy: Aesthetics, the Fantasmatic, and Film Noir,” Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavoj Zizek , ed. Geoff Boucher et al. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005): 17-39
“Beginnings and Endings: Mark Strand’s ‘Untelling,’” Poetry Criticism , ed. Larry Trudeau Detroit: Gale, 2005): 29-42 [reprint].
“Difference: Roland Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,” Roland Barthes , ed. Mike Gane and Nicholas Gane (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 557-570 [reprint].
“Assembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Glück,” The Twayne Companion to Literature in English , ed. R.H.W. Dillard and Amanda Cockrell (New York: Twayne, 2003): 347-360 [reprint].
“The Politics of Teaching Literature,” Beyond the Corporate University , ed. Henry Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001): 267-285 [reprint].
“Punk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,” Education and Cultural Studies: Toward a Performative Practice , ed. Henry Giroux and Patrick Shannon (New York: Routledge, 1997): 259-270 [reprint].
“News from Somewhere: Reading Raymond Williams’ Readers,” Cultural Materialism , ed. Christopher Prendergast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995): 71-90.
“The Politics of Teaching Literature,” Margins in the Classroom: Teaching Literature , ed. Kostas and Linda Myrsiades (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 71-90 [reprint].
“Godard/Auden/Martini: Framing the Annunciation Scene,” Perspectives on Perception: Philosophy, Art, and Literature , ed. Mary Ann Caws (New York: Peter Lang, 1989): 95-122.
“Incognito Lounge,” Contemporary Literary Criticism , ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Maturz (Detroit: Gale, 1989): 567-571 [reprint].
Articles
“ Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, and the ‘Woman in Red,’” Mystery Tribune 3 (Fall 2017): 119-129. “The Red and the Black: Gender, Genre, and the Romance of (Anti- ) Communism in The Woman on Pier 13 ,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, Media Studies 29, 3 (Fall 2014): 127-147.
“Pink Is the New Black: 50s Color Noir, the ‘Fatal Man,’ and the ‘Femme’ Detective in A Kiss before Dying ,” Popular Culture Review 25, 2 (Summer 2014): 95-107.
“Fear of a Red Planet: I Was a Communist for the FBI as ‘Black Film,’” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41, 1 (2013): 43-54.
“Audiophilia: Audiovisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Jackie Brown,” Screen 45 , No. 4 (Winter 2004): 287-304.
“Shot/Counter-Shot: Gender, Sexuality, and Postmodern Style in The Sopranos,” New Review of Film and Television Studies 2 , No. 2 (November, 2004): 16-29.
“Gen-X TV: Political-Libidinal Structures of Feeling in Melrose Place,” Journal of Film and Video 55 , No. 1 (Spring 2003): 16-29.
“Zizek and Popular Culture: Art for Lacan’s Sake,” Journal of Advanced Composition 21 , No. 3 (Summer 2001): 605-612.
“Rock ‘n’ Theory: Theory, Autobiography, Cultural Studies, and the Death of Rock,” Postmodern Culture 9 , No. 2 (January 1999): [27 pp].
“Introduction,” Marxism and Psychoanalysis Late in the Twentieth Century, South Atlantic Quarterly 97 , No. 2 (Spring 1998): 227-234.
“‘Going through the Fantasy’: Screening Slavoj Zizek,” South Atlantic Quarterly 97 , No. 2 (Spring 1998): 475-507.
“The Commodity-Body-Sign: Toward a General Economy of ‘Commodity Fetishism,’” Cultural Critique 33 (Spring 1996): 5-40.
“The Rhetoric of Post-Marxism: Discourse and Institutionality,” Social Text 45 (Winter 1995): 165-199.
“Total Recall: Production, Revolution, Simulation Alienation-Effect,” Camera Obscura 32 (Summer 1995): 5-40.
“Sturm und Searle: Intervention, Transformation, Democratization,” Mediations 16 , No. 2 (May 1992): 24-29.
“Troping Prostitution: Two or Three Things about Post-Marxism and Feminism,” Genders 12 (Winter 1991): 120-139.
“Performing Difference: Brecht, Galileo, and the ‘Regime of Quotations,’” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6 , No. 1 (Fall 1991): 15-28.
“The Politics of Teaching Literature: The ‘Paedagogical Effect,’” College Literature 17 , Numbers 2/3 (June/October 1990): 23-35.
“The Poppies of Practical Criticism: ‘Rabbi, Read the Phases of This Difference,’” Diacritics 17 , No. 2 (Summer 1987): 23-35.
“The Critic as Poet, Poet as Critic: Randall Jarrell, Deconstruction, and ‘Dirty Silence,’” American Poetry 1 , No. 2 (Winter 1984): 35-48.
“Difference: Roland Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,” Boundary 2 , Vol. 12, No. 1 (Fall 1983): 101-114.
“Assembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Glück,” The Hollins Critic 19 , No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.
“Praise: The Poetry of Robert Hass,” The Hollins Critic 19 , No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.
“Ut Pictura Poesis: Reduction in Contemporary American Painting and Poetry,” The American Poetry Review 9 , No. 6 (Winter1980): 18-32.
“‘A Postcard from the Volcano’: An Appreciation,” The Wallace Stevens Journal 3 , Numbers ¾ (Spring 1979): 36-40.
“Beginnings and Endings: Mark Strand’s ‘Untelling,’” The Literary Review 21 , No. 3 (Spring 1979): 357-373.
Review Essays
“Lust, Fantasy, Male Hysteria: Clint Eastwood (Un-) Bound,” Minnesota Review 43/44 (Fall 1995): 118-135.
“Punk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risk and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 16, No. 1 (1994): 57-67.
“The Language of Literary History: Dead or Alive?,” The Yale Review 77, No. 1 (Autumn 1987): 103-114.
“News from Somewhere: On Raymond Williams,” Textual Practice 6, No. 1 (Spring 1992): 67-78.
“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (on John Ashbery), Contemporary Literature 21, No. 3 (Spring 1980): 118-135.
Reviews
“Commentary: ‘Suffering in Rhythm: The Haunting Melody of Film Noir,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies 5, 2 (Summer 2018): 7-10. http://mediacommons.org/user/4906.
“Dashiell Hammett and Classical Hollywood Cinema,” Literature/Film Quarterly 43, 3 (Summer 2015): 236-240.
“ The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism ,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and History 43, No. 2 (Fall 2013): 80-83.
“Film Noir” (on Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton’s Panorama of American Film Noir and Paula Rabinowitz’s Black & White & Noir), Film Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 2004): 66-68.
“From Classic Rock to Gangsta Rap” (on Anthony DeCurtis’ Rocking My Life Away), Southern Review 33, No. 1 (Fall 2000): 117-120.
“Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said and Spivak” (Asha Varadharajan), Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 43 (1996 [1995]): 144-148.
“The Incognito Lounge” (Dennis Johnson), The Iowa Review 13, Numbers 3/4 (1982/83): 246-250.
Sidebars
“Dashiell Hammett,” Books to Film: Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Works , Vol. 1 , ed. Keith Barry Grant (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2017).
Papers/Presentations
“The Rhetoric of Rape: Sexual Violence in Roman Polanski’s 1970s Films in the #MeToo Era,” International Conference on Communication, Film, and Media (New York: NY: April 23-24, 2020 [accepted/conference cancelled]).
“Ripley in Italy: Visual Culture and Musical Counterpoint in Anthony Minghella’s Talented Mr. Ripley ,” 4 th International Conference on Visual Culture, Pontificia Università della Santa Croce (Rome, Italy: May 2108)
“Jazz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn ,” Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School, New York University (New York, NY: May 2017).
“Odds for Tomorrow: Race, Melo- Policier , and the Trope of Oriental Inscrutability in Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono, ” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Atlanta, GA: March, 2016).
“Research,” Edgar Allan Poe Symposium, Mystery Writers of America (New York, NY: April 29, 2015).
“Atomic ‘Cowboys’ and Un-American ‘Indians’: 50s Noir, Nuclear Espionage, and Anti-Communism in The Atomic City ,” Annual Conference, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (Chicago, IL: March 2104).
“Technicolor Noir: Niagara , Marilyn Monroe, and the ‘Woman in Red,’” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March, 2013).
“The Red and the Black: Chiaroscuro and HUAC, Bad Blondes and Flower Carriers in I Married a Communist ,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boston, MA: March, 2012).
“House Sound: Reverb, Voice-Over, and Off-Screen Sound in Early RKO Film Noir,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Los Angeles, CA: March 2010).
“Audio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: July 2008)
“Audio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Humanities Center, Otterbein College (Westerville, OH: October 25, 2007).
“Soundscape, Sound Space: Jive, Hepcats, and the Tutti Frutti Hat in Phantom Lady ,” In a Man’s World: Women in Classical Hollywood , Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March 2007).
“Noir/Musical: Gene Kelly, Cover Girl , and the Pierrot Noir,” Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: June/July 2006).
“‘Once More with Feeling’: Music, Adorno, and the Magic Spell of Lesbian Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer ,” 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,” 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).
"Ciné-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 , ‘The Suture Scenario,' and the Futurity of Film Theory," Whither Film Theory? , Modern Language Association (Washington, DC: December 1996).
" Découpage 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).
"‘Going Through the Fantasy’: 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 Ohio (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).
“Capitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism,” Marxism and Literature , Northeast Modern Language Association (Boston, MA: April 1987).
“'Capitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism': Re-Marx on Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory,” Ideologies of Modernism (West Chester, PA: October 1986).