Degrees

Ph.D., Syracuse University
M.A., Syracuse University
B.A., University of California, Los Angeles

Main Interests

Film and New Media Studies

• US film history, especially the Hollywood studio system and the New Hollywood
• digital literacy, participatory cultures, social media, relationship between technology and culture
• Digital Humanities
• American popular and entertainment culture

Research Interests

• The relationship between cinematic representation, race and urban space (with specific attention to how this is expressed through/in Hollywood film and Los Angeles)
• Online fandom and shared knowledge/collective intelligence communities
• Future of the book and the motion picture
• Role of technology in higher education research, publishing and instruction

Teaching Interests

Courses I currently teach include:

ENG 231: Introduction to New Media

ENG 249: Hollywood Genres

ENG 250: Film History I - Cinema through 1940

ENG 257: Race & Racism in U.S. Cinema

ENG 331: Digital Culture

ENG 348: Sexual Politics of Film Noir

ENG 101: Writing About the Internet

Publications

What Price Hollywood? Cinema, Race, and Urban Space in Los Angeles. Manuscript in process.

"Mapping the Beach: Beach Movies, Exploitation Film and Geographies of Whiteness." The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Ed. by Daniel Bernardi. London: Routledge, 2007. 28-50.

"Return to Oz: The Hollywood Redevelopment Project, or Film History as Urban Renewal." Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader. Ed. by Paul Grainge, Mark Jancovich and Sharon Monteith. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. 539-549.

"The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and Online Fandom when Buffy the Vampire Slayer Goes to eBay." Cinema Journal. Vol. 45, no. 4 (Summer 2006). 26-44.

"Consuming the Planet: Planet Hollywood, Stars, and the Global Consumer Culture." Hollywood: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. Ed. by Thomas Schatz. London: Routledge, 2003. 346-366 (in Volume IV: Cultural Dimensions: Ideology, Identity and Culture Industry Studies).

"Return to Oz: The Hollywood Redevelopment Project, or Film History as Urban Renewal." Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context. Ed. by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice. London: Blackwell, 2001. 59-72

"Lights, Camera, Faction: (Re)Producing Los Angeles at Universal's CityWalk." Hollywood Goes Shopping. Ed. by David Desser & Garth Jowett. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. 277-308

"Consuming the Planet: Planet Hollywood, Stars, and the Global Consumer Culture." Velvet Light Trap, #40 (Fall 1997). 42-55