SAM B. GIRGUS
STATUS: Professor of English
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee
EDUCATION: 1962 B.A. Syracuse University, American Studies
1963 M.A. State University of Iowa, English
1972 Ph.D. University of New Mexico, American Studies
ADDRESS: Department of English
318 Benson Hall Phone (615) 322-2271
Box 165, Station B or 322-2541
Vanderbilt University FAX (615) 343-8028
Nashville, TN 37235
Home: 402 Lynwood Blvd. sam.b.girgus@vanderbilt.edu
Nashville, Tennessee 37205 phone (615) 383-1751
AWARDS, HONORS, AND ORGANIZATIONS
Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, 1980-81
Senior Fulbright Lectureship, Heidelberg, Germany, Summer 1984
Publications Committee, American Studies Association, 1984-87
(Chair, 1985-1987)
Who’s Who in America
Uppsala Chair in American Studies: Fulbright Chair for Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden:
awarded November 1996
The Roundtable, Peabody College, Vanderbilt, Outstanding Educator, 2000
Professor of the Semester, Arts and Science; Panhellenic Society, Vanderbilt, Spring 2006
Member: Modern Language Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies,
EXPERIENCE: Employment and Consulting: American Studies, English, Film
1963-1967 U.S. Navy
1967-1969 Reporter-critic, Providence (R.I.) Journal
1972-1975 Assistant Professor, American Studies and English, University of
Alabama; Director, 1973-1975
1975-1984 Chairman and Associate Professor, Department of American Studies, University of New Mexico
1980-1987 Professor, English and American Studies, University of New Mexico
1985 (November-December) USIA visit: Consultant, Sofia University, Bulgaria, for developing undergraduate and graduate programs in American studies
1986 (June-August) Lecture tour: Poland, Hungary, Germany, England
1987-1990 Professor of English and Director, American Studies, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
1989-1993 Chair, Disciplinary Advisory Committee for Fulbright Scholars Awards in American Culture
1990-1992 Director, American Studies, Vanderbilt University
1992 Consultant, Los Andes University, Bogota Columbia
1993 Consultant, Hankuk University, Seoul, Korea
1995 Consultant/Lecture, Aarhus University, Denmark
2003-2004 Acting Director, Film Studies Program, Vanderbilt University
Acting Chair, Film Studies Committee, Vanderbilt University
2005-2006 Teaching Committee, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
2005-2006 Senior Fellow, Center for Religion and Culture,
Director, Film and Religion Developmental Grant
Spring 2006 Professor of the Semester, Arts and Science, Panhellenic Society
2006-2007 “Film at the Vanderbilt Commons” Program, Founder/Director
BOOKS and EDITIONS
Guest editor with Joel M. Jones and Hamlin Hill, Issue in honor of George Arms, American
Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 10 (Summer 1977), 226-313.
The Law of the Heart: Individualism and the Modern Self in American Literature (Austin and
London: University of Texas Press, 1979).
Editor, The American Self: Myth, Ideology, and Popular Culture (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1981). A collection of essays by such scholars as Sacvan Bercovitch,
Henry Nash Smith, Houston Baker, John Cawelti, Alan Trachtenberg, Robert Sklar,
Walter Blair, Lillian Schlissel, among others. Paper edition, 1982.
The New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1984).
Editor, The New Eden: Consensus and Regeneration in America (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt,
1988). Co-editors, Anthony Piccolo and Michele Conte.
Editor, The Outsider: Dissent and Alienation in America (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1988). With
Conte and Piccolo.
Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature (London and New York: Macmillan
and St. Martin’s Press, 1990). An interpretation of American literature and ideology in
terms of psychoanalysis, the “political unconscious,” and the “semantics of desire.”
The Films of Woody Allen (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Cambridge Film Classics
The Films of Woody Allen: Second Edition (2002). Two new chapters discuss Allen’s
career since the early 1990s and the moral relativism of his recent work.
Greek edition, Fall 1998. Spanish edition, Fall 2005.
Books and Editions Continued:
Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan
(Cambridge University Press, 1998). Directors John Ford, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks,
Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann, and George Stevens constitute a cinematic counterpart in
the mid-20th century to the classic writers of the American Renaissance a century earlier.
These auteurs replicate the situation of our classic Renaissance writers in dramatizing the
basic values, conflicts, and contradictions of American democracy.
America on Film: Modernism, Documentary, and a Changing America (Cambridge University
Press, 2002)
The work suggests the reembodiment in recent films of American values, conflicts, and ideals in figures who
differ in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender from classic representative characters. The book analyzes these changes by exploring the tension in
film involving fiction, documentary, and modernism.
The Cinema of Redemption: Levinas on Time, Ethics, and the Feminine (Columbia Univesity Press, 2010)
Creative Work
In Loco Amicis: the New Vanderbilt Story: a 40-minute documentary about change at
Vanderbilt University under new leadership. The documentary was researched, written,
filmed, and edited by students in a class listed as Documentary Vanderbilt.
Student Screening: 13 February 2002, Rand Student Center, Vanderbilt University
Accepted for Nashville Film Festival: Screening, April 27, 2004
ARTICLES and REVIEWS
“Bartley Hubbard: The Rebel in Howells’ A Modern Instance,” Research Studies: Washington
State University 39 (December 1971), 315-321.
“The Other Maisie: Inner Death and Fatalism in James’ What Maisie Knew,” Arizona Quarterly
29 (Summer 1973), 115-122.
“Howells and Marcuse: A Forecast of the One-Dimensional Age,” American Quarterly 25
(March 1973), 108-118.
“Perspective: A Campus View -- The Humanities,” Birmingham News 11 (November 1973),
16A.
“Culture and Post-Culture in Walt Whitman,” The Centennial Review 18 (Fall 1974), 392-410.
“Charles Ives and the Transcendentalists,” Research Studies: Washington State University 43
(March 1975), 19-26.
Essay-Review of W.D. Howells’ April Hopes, ed. Kermit Vanderbilt, American Literary Realism,
8 (Fall 1975), 362-364.
“The Scholar as Prophet: Brownson vs. Emerson and the Modern Need for a Moral Humanism,”
The Midwest Quarterly 17 (August 1975), 88-89.
“Poe and R.D. Laing: The Transcendental Self,” Studies in Short Fiction 13 (Summer 1976),
299-309.
“The Mechanical Mind: Thoreau and McLuhan on Freedom, Technology, and the Media,”
Thoreau Journal Quarterly 9 (October 1977), 3-9.
“The Perverted Self in American Literature and Culture,” The Midwest Quarterly 19 (Winter
1978), 160-175.
“Years of His Youth: On George Arms and American Studies Scholarship,” New America 3
(Summer-Fall 1977), 46-47.
“Conscience in Connecticut: Civilization and Its Discontents in Twain’s Camelot,” The New
England Quarterly 60 (December 1978), 547-560.
“John Hersey,” American Novelists Since World War II: Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed.
James E. Kibler, Jr. (Detroit:Gale, 1980), 137-144.
Introduction: “American Studies and the American Self” in The American Self, 1-4.
“Individual Conscience and Mass Culture in Mark Twain,” Journal of American Culture 4 (Fall
1981), 156-163.
“The New Covenant: The Jews and the Myth of America” in The American Self, 105-123.
“Fancy Free,” Salmagundi (Spring-Summer 1981), 208-216. An essay-review.
“The American Self Today: A Crisis of Belief,” The American Self, paperback edition, August
1982.
“A Poetics of the American Idea: The Jewish Writer and America,” Prospects 8, ed. Jack
Salzman (Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1983), 327-348.
“R.D. Laing and Literature: Readings of Poe, Hawthorne, and Kate Chopin” in Psychological
Perspectives on Literature: Freudian Dissidents and Non-Freudians, ed. Joseph Natoli
(Hamden, CT: Archon, 1983), 181-197.
“The Devil and the Demon Woman: Symbols of Freedom in Isaac Bashevis Singer,” Letterature
D’America: Rivista Trimestrale n.27, (Anno VI, Primavera 1985), 131-150.
“The New Age of Narcissism: The Sexual Politics of Howells’ A Modern Instance, Mosaic 19
(Winter 1986), 33-44.
“Love and Liberation: The Conflicting Sexual Ideologies of Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins
Gilman” in The Outsider.
“In His Own Voice: E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel” in “E.L. Doctorow: A Democracy of
Perception -- A Symposium With and On E.L. Doctorow,” eds. Herwig Friedl and Dieter
Schulz, Arbeiten zur Amerikanstik, Band 2 (Summer 1988), 75-90.
“Religious Freedom or Real Estate: The Problem of Ideology in Interdisciplinary Studies,” essay-
review of Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age
of Industrialization, 1800-1890 in American Quarterly 38 (Summer 1986), 299-304.
“Portnoy’s Complaint: A New Chapter in the American Unconscious” in Reading Philip Roth:
Beyond Controversy to Understanding, eds. Asher Z. Milbauer and Donald G. Watson
(London: Macmillan Press, 1988), 126-143.
Essay-Review of Ideology and Classic American Literature, eds. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra
Jehlen (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) in American Poetry 5 (Spring 1988), 91-93.
Review of the American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent by Myra
Jehlen (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986) in American Literary Realism,1870-1910
21(Spring 1989), 72-74.
Essay-Review of Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Light: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary
Culture by Shoshana Felman (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987) and Reading Lacan
by Jane Gallop (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986) in American Poetry 5 (Winter 1988), 74-76.
Review of Creative Awakening: The Jewish Presence in Twentieth-Century American Literature
1900-1940 by Louis Harap (New York: Greenwood, 1987) in American Literature 59
(December 1987), 667-668.
“In Search of the Real America” in Bernard Malamud, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea
House, 1986) 207-216. Reprint from The New Covenant.
Review of Scenes of Nature, Signs of Men by Tony Tanner (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987)
in American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 22 (Fall 1989), 92-93.
Review of American Writers and Radical Politics, 1900-1939 by Eric Homberger (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1986) in American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 21 (Fall 1988), 94-95.
Review of The Trail(s) of Psychoanalysis edited by Francoise Meltzer (Chicago: U of Chicago
Press, 1987) in American Poetry 6 (Winter 1989), 91-93.
Review of Social Criticism and Nineteenth Century American Fictions by Robert Shulman
(Columbia: U of Missouri Press, 1987) for ANQ 2 (January 1989), 34-36.
Essay-Review of Freud: A Life for our Time by Peter Gay (New York: Norton, 1988) in
American Poetry 6 (Winter 1989), 93-96.
Review of The Pursuit of American Character by Rupert Wilkinson (New York: Harper, 1988) in
Western American Literature 23 (Spring 1989), 381-382.
Essay-Review of Freud in Exile: Psychoanalysis and Its Vicissitudes, edited by Edward Timms
and Naomi Segal (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1988) in American Poetry 6
(Spring 1989), 84-87.
“Between Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy: Becoming a Man and Writer in Roth’s Feminist
‘Family Romance,’” “Rethinking Philip Roth,” ed. Daniel Walden, a special issue of
Studies In American Jewish Literature 8 (Fall 1989), 143-153.
Review of The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989) by Miles Orvell in American Literary
Realism, 1870-1910 23 (Spring 1991), 89-90.
Review of The White Monk: An Essay of Dostoevsky and Melville by F.D. Reeve (Nashville:
Vanderbilt UP, 1990) in American Literature 62 (December 1990), 709-710.
Essay-Review of Reading Freud: Explorations and Entertainments by Peter Gay (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1990); Feminism and Psychoanalysis by Nancy J. Chodorow (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1989); Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis edited by Teresa Brennan
(London and New York: Routledge, 1989); Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and
Women’s Cinema by Lucy Fischer (Princeton: PrincetonUP, 1989) for American
Quarterly 43 (June 1991), 347-357.
“Ethnicity in Contemporary Fiction in America” scheduled for Culture/Kultura: Soviet American
Dialogues on Literature eds. Emory Elliott, Ellen Chances, Robert Maguire for Duke UP.
Review of The Estrangement of the Past: A Study in the Origin of Modern Historical \
Consciousness by Anthony Kemp (New York/Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991) for ANQ 5
(January 1992), 26-28.
Review of The Idea of Authorship in America: Democratic poetics from Franklin to Melville by
Kenneth Dauber (Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1990) for Nineteenth Century
Literature 46 (March 1992), 548-550.
Essay-Review of Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism by Elizabeth Fox-
Genovese (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) for
ANQ 4 (October 1991), 209-215.
“Philip Roth and Woody Allen: Freud and the Humor of the Repressed” in Semites and
Stereotypes: Characteristics of Jewish Humor, eds. Avner Ziv and Anat Zajdman
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 121-130.
“`The New Covenant’ and the Dilemma of Dissensus” in Summoning: Ideas of the Covenant and
Interpretive Theory, ed. Ellen Spolsky (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1993), 251-270.
Essay-Review of City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield by Robert Sklar (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992), Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History, eds. Robert
Sklar and Charles Musser (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), All That
Hollywood Allows: Rereading Gender in 1950s Melodrama by Jackie Byars (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) for ANQ 7 (January 1994), 53-59.
“Desire and Narrativity in Annie Hall,” The Explicator 51 (Winter 1993), 122-124.
Review of Novel Frames: Literature as Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture by
Joseph R. Urgo (Jackson: Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1991) for College
Literature 20 (October 1993), 164-166.
“The New Ethnic Novel and the American Idea,” College Literature 20 (October 1993), 57-72.
“Representative Men: Unfreezing the Male Gaze:” Essay-Review of Women and Film: A Sight
and Sound Reader, eds. Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1993), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, eds.
Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (London: Routledge, 1993) Paul Smith, Clint Eastwood:
A Cultural Production (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1993), Kaja Silverman,
Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York: Routledge,1992) in College Literature 21 (October 1994), 214-22.
Review of The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure by Brian Taves
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993) in American Studies 36 (Spring 1995),
182-183.
“Hollywood and American Politics: The Play’s the Thing,” Essay-Review of Ronald Reagan in
Hollywood: Movies and Politics by Steven Vaughn (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press,1993) in American Studies 36 (Spring 1995), 115-121.
“Minimal Males: Men in the Movies,” Essay-Review of Acting in the Cinema by James
Naremore, Acting Male by Dennis Bingham, Rebel Males by Graham McCann in
American Studies 37 (Fall 1996), 175-184.
Review of A Cultural History of the American Novel: Henry James to William Faulkner by
David Minter in MODERNISM/modernity 2 (September 1995), 177-179.
“4Fresh Starts’: Bugsy, The Great Gatsby, and the American Dream,” Letterature D’America 14
(1994) nos. 57-58 (1997), 49-69.
“The Moral and Psychological Dilemma of Modern Times: Love, Play, and Civilization in
Chaplin’s Last Silent Classic,” Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor 16 (1996) nos. 1 & 2
(1997), 3-15.
“Shattered Image: From Consensus To Contention in Classic American Cinema” in Reflections
on Multiculturalism,” ed. Robert F. Eddy (Yarmouth: Intercultural Press, 1996), 61-74.
Review of Hollywood’s High Noon: Moviemaking & Society Before Television by Thomas
Cripps in American Studies 38(Fall 1997): 154-155.
Review of History by Hollywood: The Use and Abuse of the American Past by Robert Brent
Toplin in American Studies 38 (Fall 1997): 133-134.
“Imaging Masochism and the Politics of Pain: 4Facing’ the Word in the Cinetext of Seize the
Day in New Essays on Seize the Day,” ed. Michael P. Kramer (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1998): 71-92.
“Documentary America: Exploring Popular Culture,” Essay-Review in American Studies 40
(Fall 1999): 147-155.
Review of Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.’s Campaign Against Nazism by Michael E. Birdwell
(New York: New York University Press, 1999) in the Journal of American History (June
2000): 273-274.
Review of Jewish Gangsters of Modern Literature (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) by
Rachel Rubin in American Literature 73 (March 2001): 216-217.
“Woody Allen and American Character in Deconstructing Harry,” in Woody Allen: A Casebook
(New York/London: Routledge, 2001), pp.143-145.
Review of A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left by
Paul Buhle and David Wagner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) in
Journal of American History (September 2002): 141
Review of American Audiences on Movies and Moviegoing by Tom Stempel (Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press, 2001) in American Studies 43(Spring 2002): 196-197.
“Zelig” in Understanding Film Genres, eds, Steven Schneider, Tom Pendergast, and
Sara Pendergast proposed for McGraw-Hill.
“1938” for Screen Decades: The 1930’s, ed. Ina Rae Hark scheduled for Rutgers University Press
for 2004-2005.
Seabiscuit, “Horses in Literature and Film,” MLA Radio Series, What’s the Word?
Recorded July 2004.
Review of The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950-2002 by Paul Buhle and
Dave Wagner (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003) Journal of American History
(December 2004): 1082.
Review of The Invention of the Western Film: A Cultural History of the Genre’s First Half-
Century by Scott Simon (New York: Cambridge, 2003) in American Studies (Fall 2004):
171-172.
“The Modernism of Frank Capra and Current European Ethical Thought” for Dialogues with
Hollywood: World Cinema’s Relationship with American Film Culture, ed., Paul Cooke
(Palgrave)
Review of Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema by Elisabeth Bronfen
(New York: Columbia U Press, 2004) in American Studies (Summer 2005): 194.
“The Spirit of the Hollywood Jews: American Transcendence” in Jews in American Popular
Culture, ed., Paul Buhle (Praeger/Greenwood) scheduled for 2006.
“The Lost Transcendence of Woody Allen: From `Divine Comedy’ to Celebrity”for
Postscript: Essays in Film and the Humanities.
“Beyond Ontology: Emmanuel Levinas and a Philosophy for Film,” forthcoming in the on-line journal Film-Philosophy.
Essay-Review of Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Cineaste (Winter 2009): 55-57.
PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS:
“The Other Maisie in James’ What Maisie Knew,” American Literature Section, South Atlantic
MLA Convention; Atlanta, Georgia, November 16, 1973.
“Something in His Brain: Charles Ives and the Transcendentalists,” Ives and Schoenberg: A
Series of Concert-Lectures, University of Alabama, September 10, 1974.
“Beyond the Diver Complex: Toward a New Individualism in F. Scott Fitzgerald,” presented at
the National American Studies Association Convention on October 28, 1977 as part of a
program on “Ambiguous American Classics.”
“The Revolution in American Culture studies,” moderator and coordinator of a lecture series at
the University of New Mexico, October-November, 1978.
“Beyond New York: The Jewish Experience and the American West,” a paper presented to the
Canadian Association for American Studies for the fifteenth annual conference on
“Westward Movements,” November 1-3, 1979 in Vancouver, Canada.
“The Jewish Experience in America: Old Myths and New Realities,” panel chairperson for the
Seventh Biennial Convention of the American Studies Association, September 17-30,
1979, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“Visions of America,” four lectures on Whitman, Melville, Fitzgerald, West, and Mailer, Centro
di Studi Americani, Rome, Italy, May 29-31, 1984.
“The Devil and the Occult in Jewish American Writers,” University of Paris, June 4-5, 1984,
Paris, France.
“America and the Semantics of Desire,” John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University, Berlin,
German-American Studies Association, June 14, 1984.
“Confronting the Holocaust,” a series of three lectures in Albuquerque, New Mexico through
the New Mexico Humanitites Council, September-October 1985.
“America and the Semantics of Desire: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the American Ideology,”
panel chair and paper for Biennial Convention, American Studies Association, November
1, 1985, San Diego, California.
“Eros and Ideology in America” and “Love and Politics in E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of
Daniel,” Heidelberg, West Germany and Universita Degli Studi Di Verona, Italy,
December 1985.
“Alienation,” 4th Annual Convocation Day, a program for honors students, Albuquerque Public
Schools, January 25, 1986.
“Liberation and the American Unconscious,” School of English and American Studies, The
University of Sussex, Brighton, England, June 12, 1986 and Anglistisches Seminar,
University of Heidleberg, Heidelberg, Germany, July 14, 1986.
Lecturer: English Teaching Seminar, Pecs, Hungary, June 19-July 11, 1986.
Lecturer: English Teaching Seminar, Poznan, Poland, August 1-24, 1986.
“The New American: Reconstructing the American Unconscious,” Conference of the American
Studies Association, New York, Hilton, November 20-24, 1987.
“Philip Roth and Woody Allen: Freudian Poetics and the Humor of the Repressed” for the Third
International Conference on Jewish Humor, Tel Aviv University, Israel, June 20-23,
1989.
“`The New Covenant’ and the Dilemma of Dissensus” for the International Conference on
Covenants, Bar-Ilan University, November 20-23, 1989, Bar Ilan University, Israrel.
“Commentary: New West/ True West,”conference of the American Studies Association,
Toronto, November 2-5, 1989.
“Ethnicity in Contemporary Fiction in America,” Moscow, Russia, December 13, 1990,
Moscow University as part of Culture/Kultura: Soviet American Dialogues on
Literature. Also at the NEH Research Center, Durham, North Carolina, May 23,
1991.
“Ethnicity in the United States and Soviet Union,” International Committee Session:
Collaboration and Cooperation between Soviet and American Scholars, conference of
the American Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, Nov. 1, 1991.
“The New Ethnicity in Contemporary American Fiction: The Challenge to the American Idea,”
MLA Conference session on “Transcending Ethnicity: The Minority Writer as
Universalist,” San Francisco, December 1991.
“Madonna: Feminist or Sexist?” Panel discussion at Vanderbilt University for Women’s History
Month, March 16, 1992.
“Ethnicity and the Novel” for “Ethnic America” symposium on American Studies, Vanderbilt
University, April 17, 1992.
“The Psycho-Cinematic Vision of Nathaniel Hawthorne: 4Young Goodman Brown’ and the
Cinema of Desire,” MLA Conference session on “New Cultural Studies of Nathaniel
Hawthorne,” MLA Convention, New York City, 30 December 1992.
“Ethnicity and the Curriculum” and “Envisioning America: Directors and American Cinema,”
a faculty workshop and guest lecture, 25-26 April, 1993, Furman University.
“Shattered Image in American Cinema,” Aarhus University, Denmark, March 7, 1995.
“American Film and American Culture,” Consortium for American Studies, Center for American
Studies, Odense University, Odense, Denmark, March 9, 1995.
Lecture, Institute in American Studies, Conference of Foreign Scholars of American Culture,
Wednesday, 2 August 1995, Vanderbilt University, “Teaching American Film: Film and
American Culture.”
Lecture/Seminar, “Psychiatry and American Film: The Revolution in Cinematic Perspectives
on Psychoanalysis,” Seminar Series: A Psychiatric Perspective on the Humanities,
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 26 October 1995.
Lecture/Seminar, “What Do Your Dreams Mean? CMH Fireplace Chat,” Peabody College RA
Staff Talk, Vanderbilt University, 12 December 1995.
BBC Radio Interview and Seminar on Woody Allen, The Colin Bell Programme, Thursday, 6
June 1996, 1300-1400 BST.
“Consciousness, Freedom, and Pragmatism: The Cinematic Realism of William Dean Howells,”
American Literature Association, Baltimore, Maryland, 22-24 May 1997.
“America on Film,” Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colo., October 1998.
“Screening the Politics of Identity,” Panel Moderator, MELUS Conference, Vanderbilt
University, 20 March 1999.
“Film and Modernism in America: Documentary and a Democratic Aesthetic,” Graduate Student
Academic Committee, Vanderbilt, 31 March 2000.
“Hank Greenberg’s America,” talk for the Nashville Jewish Film Festival. “The Life and Times
of Hank Greenberg,” 4 November 2001, Belcourt Theater, Nashville, TN.
In Loco Amicis, screening of 40-minute documentary at Vanderbilt, 13 February 2002.
“A Free Ham: The Jewish Dilemma and Ethnic Humor,” talk for Nancy Walker/Lecture
Humor Symposium, sponsored by Women’s Studies, the Warren Center, and Department of
English, Vanderbilt, April 5, 2002.
“The Prisoner of Aura: The Lost World of Woody Allen,” Society for Cinema Studies 2002
Conference, Denver, Colorado, May 2002.
“Film and Modernism”: Panel for the Modernist Studies Association, 31 October-
3 November 2002, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “Allen’s Fall into Modernism:
Mind, Morals and Meaning in Deconstructing Harry.”
“Film, American Modernism, and Democracy”: Panel Organizer for the Modernist Studies
Association, 25-28 September 2003, Birmingham, UK; Paper: “The Making of American
Modernism: Film and Culture.”
“Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy Today,” Davidson Academy, Nashville, TN,
November 18, 2003.
“Queen Margot: Moral Grounding in Times of Radical Evil,” for French and Francophone Fictions:
Cinema and Television, International Conference, Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon, France,
July 6-8, 2004.
In Loco Amicis: The New Vanderbilt Story, Nashville Film Festival, April 27, 2004.
Seabiscuit, “Horses in Literature and Film,” MLA Radio Series, What’s the Word?
Recorded July 2004.
Screening of In Loco Amicis and Panel,” “How Far Have We Come? Race Relations and
Integration at Vanderbilt,” Black Cultural Center, November 11, 2004
“The Complex Vision of Emmanuel Levinas: A Philosophy for Film in Modern Times,”
2005 International Conference for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies,
March 31-April 3, 2005, London Institute of Education, London, England
“Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra: Time and Freedom on the Western Frontier,” Classic
Western Film Festival,” Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Jimmy Stewart Museum,
University Presidential Inauguration Ceremony, Friday, September 16, 2005.
Introduction to showing of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Jewish Film Festival,
Nashville, TN, November 6, 2005
“Time and Ethics in the ‘Hollywood Renaissance,’” Kings College, London, scheduled for
Spring 2006.
“Frank Capra and Emmanuel Levinas: Time, Transcendence, and Freedom in Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington”SCMS Conference and Docuscript Workshop, March 2006, Vancouver, B.C.
Special Session on Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption: Time, Ethics, and the Feminine
(Columbia University Press, 2010) at the North American Levinas Society Meeting, Sunday,
May 1, 2011 at Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas
PROJECTS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Development of a new master’s degree program in American Studies at the
University of Alabama, 1974-1975.
Expansion and revision of the undergraduate program in American Studies at the
University of Alabama.
Establishment of a Resource, Research, and Writing Laboratory in American
Studies through a grant from the Presidential Venture Fund at the University of Alabama,
January 1975.
Executive Committee of the Southeastern American Studies Association, 1974-5.
Workshop Director for the National American Studies Association Convention
in San Antonio, Texas, November 1975, on “Politics of New Program Development.”
Director of “Alabama and the Nation,” a $16,190 project funded by the Alabama
Committee for the Humanities and Public Policy, March, 1975.
Director, American Issues Forum Project, 1975-1976, of the New Mexico
Humanities Council.
Teacher-Consultant: Rough Rock Demonstration School, Rough Rock, Arizona
on the Navajo Reservation as part of Field-Based Navajo Teacher Educational Development
Project, Fall-Spring 1976-1977.
Chairman, Arts and Sciences Ad Hoc Committee for the Humanities, 1976-78.
Establishment and development of a Student Learning Service for students in
American culture studies courses throughout the college, 1977.
Expansion and revision of undergraduate American Studies program at the
University of New Mexico and the development of an undergraduate major in American Studies,
Spring, 1978.
Award of $400 grant from the Greater U.N.M. Fund for development of a
course on American culture and films, entitled “American on Film,” Spring 1978.
Appointed by President Davis to the University Ad Hoc Committee on Rhodes
Scholarships, December 1977-1979.
Development of new master’s degree program in American Studies at the
University of New Mexico, approved September, 1979. The university began offering the doctorate in
American Studies in 1944, making it the oldest doctoral program on the campus.
Therefore, with the development of both a major and a master’s degree, the department now offers three degrees in the field.
Basic Skills Program, University of New Mexico, teacher-consultant, Fall 1979.
An experimental, university-wide effort at interdisciplinary and interdepartmental remedial education for students deficient in basic study skills.
Coordinator, Kellogg Foundation Grant Proposal for the development of the
leadership potential of Hispanic and Native American Youth, Fall, 1982.
Chair, Arts and Sciences Committee on Southwestern Studies, 1982-1983.
Arts and Sciences Promotions Committee, 1984-1985.
University of New Mexico Press Committee, 1985-1987.
Arts and Sciences Tenure Committee, 1986-1987.
Graduate Committee, Department of English, University of Oregon, 1987-1989.
Founder, American Studies Forum, University of Oregon, a student organization
involved in various projects to develop American studies, such as fund-raising, community
relations, speakers, and school projects.
Develop and institute undergraduate American Studies major, Vanderbilt
University.
Develop and organize May Semestser interdepartamental graduate seminar and
program in American Studies, Vanderbilt University, May 1991 and May 1992.
Colloquium program for American Studies Faculty and students at Vanderbilt
University.
Writing Committee, Department of English, Vanderbilt University, 1992.
Consultant in American Studies, Los Andes University, Bogota, Columbia,
February 24-March 7, 1992.
Consultant in American Studies to Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul,
South Korea to lecture on American literature, organize first graduate program in American Studies,
and to develop an appropriate curriculum and program structure, scheduled for 24
February to 9 March, 1993.
Undergraduate Studies Committee, Department of English, Vanderbilt University,
1994-1997.
Consultant in American Studies for Institute of English Studies, Aarhus
University, March 3-March 12, 1995.
Reviewing for several publications and presses, including PMLA, Oxford UP,
Cambridge UP, Routledge, Kentucky
Reviewer/Consultant for Cambridge University Press on “Film Genre” series.
Participant, Approved/Funded Project, Robert Penn Warren Center for the
Humanities, Vanderbilt University, “Personal Worlds, Cultural Worlds: Approaches to Culture,” 1996.
Arts and Sciences Film Studies Task Force/Committee, 1997-2003.
Arts and Sciences Committee on Individual Programs, 1988-2000.
Board Member, Hillel, Vanderbilt University, 2003-2005
Honorary VUcept, August 2003-2004
Acting Director, Film Studies Program, Vanderbilt, 2003-2004
Acting Chair, Film Studies Committee, Vanderbilt, 2003-2004
Approval of Film Studies Major, Vanderbilt, April 2004
Senior Fellow, Center for Study of Religion and Culture, Director, “Film and
Religion” Developmental Grant, Center for the Study of Religion and Culture,
Vanderbilt University, Fall 2005-2007
Mentor, Emphasis Program, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Fall 2005- Spring 2006
Teaching Committee, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2005-2006
Steering Committee, Film Studies, Vanderbilt, 2005--2006
Professor of the Semester Award, Arts and Science; Panhellenic Society
of Vanderbilt (chosen by ten sororities); Spring 2006
“Film at the Vanderbilt Commons”—Project of several workshops
taught by visiting scholars and teachers—2006-2007
