Emily Albu, associate professor of Classics, teaches Classics 102: Film and the Classical World. Her article on the 2000 blockbuster, Gladiator (“Gladiator at the Millennium”) will appear in Celluloid Classics, a special issue of the journal Arethusa. Classics 102: Film and the Classical World The Classical World as portrayed in films. Viewings and discussions of modern versions of ancient dramas, modern dramas set in the Ancient Mediterranean world, and films imbued with classical themes and allusions. Supplementary readings in ancient literature and mythology. GE credit: ArtHum, Wrt.
Professor Xiaomei Chen loves to teach Chinese films that she grew up with in the People’s Republic of China. Her Chinese 101 is a popular course covering classics from the silent film era to the twentieth-first century. Her research areas include modern Chinese literature and culture, performance studies, and visual cultural studies, which can be examined through the critical analysis of films.
The annual International Short Festival (Festival International du Court-Métrage: www.clermont-filmfest.com) each February in Clermont-Ferrand, France, probably marks the beginning of my active engagement with film. Between ‘81 and ‘87, while I was living in France, I worked each year with the festival as their translator, and in the process, learnt a tremendous about film-making and the medium of film. Check out their website for the 2008 festival! Fast forward to my work here at UC Davis, and here I regularly teach courses on film in the French and Francophone world.
Sergio de la Mora is Associate Professor in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Davis. His book, Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film (University of Texas Press, 2006) was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award in the category of Art and Culture. His research and teaching interests include Latin American and Chicano/Latino film, video and literature, third cinema, popular culture, queer studies and cultural studies. His courses include Mexican Cinema, Latin/o American Cinema, Representation in Chicana/o Cinema.
Laura Grindstaff is an Associate Professor who came to UC Davis 10 years ago from the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches in the areas of popular culture, cultural sociology, gender and society, and field methods. Her research focuses broadly on American popular culture and its role in constructing gender, race, and class relations. Her first book, The Money Shot, is an ethnographic account of daytime television talkshows.
Hall Margherita Heyer-Caput completed her education in Italy (Laurea in Filosofia, 1980, University of Torino) and the United States (Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures, 1993, Harvard University), and taught for several years at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and various universities of the East Coast. Her research and teaching areas cover the Italian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to philosophical approaches to literature, Italian women writers, literature and film, Italian and Italian American Cinema.
Robert Irwin, Professor of Spanish, specializes in Mexican and Latin American cultural studies. He teaches courses on Mexican and Latin American film from a historical and transnational perspective. He is currently researching the reception of Mexican “Golden Age” film in Latin America.
For many years Andy coordinated the Computer-Aided Instruction Program for the Writing Program and the English Department, and the Faculty Mentoring Faculty Program for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He teaches classes in Writing in Education, American Literature, Literary Theory, and Poetry; and in the past has taught The Beat Generation in Poetry and Film, Creativity and Technology, Film Theory and Criticism, and The Literature of Science Fiction.
Caren Kaplan is Professor of American Studies and affiliated faculty in Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies. She is also affiliated with the Humanities Innovation Lab, the Mellon Research Initiative in Digital Cultures, and the IFHA on Gamification.
Anna K. Kuhn’s research interests include women’s literature, feminist theory, film studies and German cultural studies. She teaches the introductory course in Women’s Studies and feminist theory the senior seminar. courses on women’s literature and film courses in the program. She also teaches courses in the Comparative Literature program.
Michael J. Lazzara is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture in the Spanish Department and affiliated faculty with Film Studies and the Program in Cultural Studies. His research focuses on contemporary Latin American artistic projects from the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina), particularly those dealing with issues of dictatorship, democratic transition and traumatic memory.
Professor of Comparative Literature, and was founding co-director of Film Studies at UC Davis. His film-related courses include World Cinema, Introduction to Film, Chinese Cinema, and Hong Kong Cinema. As author and editor of half a dozen books, he has wide-ranging research interests: transnational cinema, globalization studies, Chinese literature, narrative theory, and comparative poetics.
English Professor Scott Simmon works at the intersection of film scholarship, archiving, and access, with the goal of expanding the availability of rare films.His best known publications are the Treasures from American Film Archives DVD series, the third volume of which, Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934, was released in October 2007 (and called by Film Comment, “a must-have package – a giant step in the true movie-pilgrim’s progress”).Scott frequently teaches the overview survey of international film history (English 161A & B); in 2007-08 he will teach “Film as N
Eric Smoodin is a Professor in the Programs in American Studies and Film Studies. He received his PhD in Film Studies from UCLA in 1984, and his research and teaching interests include American and European film history from1895 to 1960, the American and European film industries, the film audience, and the history of Film Studies as an academic discipline.
Juliana Schiesari is the author of The Gendering of Melancholia: Feminism, Psychoanalysis and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature, and co-editor of Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Her areas of research include: feminist theory, psychoanalysis, Renaissance and early modern literature, women’s literature and cultural studies. She is currently writing a book on the politics of domestication of women and animals.
