I am an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University, where I teach film courses on a number of topics. I hold a doctorate in English from the University of Chicago and a master of arts in cinema studies from New York University.
I have been honored to receive the Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
Research
My research focuses on genre films and on the historical reception of cinema. Bringing these two interests together is my 2007 University of California Press book, Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre, which examines the initial historical phase of the horror film in relation to the coming of sound to Hollywood cinema. Here are reviews in Film Quarterly, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Film Criticism, Image & Narrative, Choice, and Music, Sound and the Moving Image.
Selected essays:
- “Midsommar: Thing Theory” in Quarterly Review of Film and Video
- “The Machine in the Ghost: Writing Women in Supernatural“ in Quarterly Review of Film and Video
- “What is Film Atmosphere?” in Quarterly Review of Film and Video
- “Carl Dreyer’s Corpse: Horror Film Atmosphere and Narrative” in A Companion to the Horror Film
- “Horror Film Atmosphere as Anti-narrative (and Vice Versa)” in Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema
- “New Worlds and Dark Traditions: Back Winding and Forward Propulsion in The Woman Came Back“ in The Cine-Files
- “Old Times in Werewolf of London” in the Journal of Film and Video
- “Strange Botany in Werewolf of London“ in Horror Studies
- “The Old Dark House and the Space of Attraction” in Cinémas
- “The Uncanny Body of Early Sound Film” in The Velvet Light Trap
- “The Figure Seen from the Rear, Vitagraph, and the Development of Shot/Reverse Shot” in Film History
- “Guilty By Omission: Girding The Fountainhead for the Cold War,” in Literature/Film Quarterly
- “The Seeing Ear: Radio Techniques in Orson Welles’s Heart of Darkness,” in Conrad on Film
- “Geniuses of the Systems: Authorship and Evidence in Classical Hollywood Cinema,” in Film History
Teaching
Courses I have taught include Introduction to Film; History of Film—Origins to Present; Introduction to Film Genres; The Horror Film; Science Fiction Films; Hitchcock; Movies and Meaning; American Cinema History and Culture; Watching Movies—Spectatorship, Reception, Reflexivity; and Storytelling and Cinema.
I welcome inquiries about film studies at Case Western Reserve, which now offers an undergraduate minor in film and an English major with a concentration in film.