Associate Professor / Director of Film Studies
Ph.D. English with Certificate in Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh (2010)
M.A. Film Studies, Emory University (2004)
B.A. English, Georgetown College (2000)
Bio
As the Director of Film Studies, I oversee the Film Studies Concentration as well as the Global Cinema Minor. My scholarship and teaching investigate the history of film style in a global context. My approach to cinema is interdisciplinary and comparative, with an eye to how film, literature, and other media interrelate. I am particularly interested in the philosophical and reflective capabilities of cinema, hence my focus in recent publications on forms such as the essay film and slow, contemplative cinema. My courses, whatever their topic, show students how to write about films with precision, clarity, and nuance. My aim is not merely to expand their knowledge but also to improve their audiovisual literacy, honing their sensitivity to how film and television participate in larger intellectual, cultural, and political debates. As a founding editor, I supervise Aspect: Journal of Film and Screen Media, which highlights some of the best writing produced by our undergraduate film students.
To read more, visit my website
Publications:
Books
- The Rebirth of Suspense: Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
- Godard and the Essay Film: A Form That Thinks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2018, https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810137370/godard-and-the-essay-film/.
- True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity, co-editor with Colin MacCabe and Kathleen Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Select Articles and Chapters
- “Audiovisual Rhythm and its Spectator: Moonlight as Example.” In The Oxford Handbook to Film Theory, edited by Kyle Stevens. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
- “Kubrickian Dread: Echoes of 2001 and The Shining in Works by Jonathan Glazer, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David Lynch.” In After Kubrick: A Filmmaker’s Legacy, edited by Jeremi Szaniawski. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020.
- “Malick’s Emergent Lyricism in Badlands and Days of Heaven.” In The Other Hollywood Renaissance, edited by R. Barton Palmer, Murray Pomerance, and Dominic Lennard. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.
- “Essaying the Forms of Popular Cinema: Godard, Farocki, and the Principle of Shot-Countershot.” In The Essay Film: Dialogue, Politics, Utopia, edited by Caroline Eades and Elizabeth Papazian, 28-66. London: Wallflower, 2016.
Teaching Awards
- Chapman Family Teaching Award, 2022
- Johnston Teaching Excellence Award, 2020
Awards
- Carolina Asia Center Grant, 2020
- Schwab Academic Excellence Award, Institute for the Arts & Humanities, 2018
- Institute for the Arts & Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Fall 2015
- Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Annual Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania, 2011-12
- Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, 2009-10
- Richard Tobias Dissertation Fellowship, 2008-09
- University of Pittsburgh Center for International Studies Travel Grant, 2006
Courses Taught:
- CMPL 143 History of Gobal Cinema
- CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media
- CMPL 240 Introduction to Film Theory
- CMPL 280 Film Genres (Horror/Thriller/Dark Comedy)
- CMPL 375 New Wave Cinema: Its Sources and its Legacies (survey of new wave cinemas across Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, and East Asia)
- ENGL 251 Film Performance and Stardom
- ENGL 252: National and Transnational Cinemas (Japan, China, South Korea)
- ENGL 323 American Films of the 1970s
- ENGL 324 Creating the Video Essay
- ENGL 380 Film History
- ENGL 381 Cinema and Literature
- ENGL 389 Film Directors (Hitchcock/Kubrick)
- ENGL 410H Documentary Film
- CMPL 420 Film, Photography, and the Digital Image
- CMPL 463 Cinema and Surrealism
- CMPL 494 The Essay Film: Adventures in Modern Cinema Since 1945
- ENGL 680 Film Theory
- ENGL 881 Studies in Cinema