Dissertations and Placement
1989
Linda Mizejewski
Dissertation title: “Sally Bowles: Fascism, Female Spectacle, and the Politics of Looking”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Marcia Landy, Dana Polan, Sabine Hake (German)
Placement: Professor, Ohio State University
1993
John Champagne
Dissertation title: The Ethics of Transgression: Criticism and Cultural Marginality
Chair: Paul Bove
Readers: Lucy Fischer, Marcia Landy, Dana Pollan, Danae Clarke
Placement: Penn State Erie, the Behrend College
1994
Madhava Prasad
Dissertation title: “Culture in a State of Crisis: A Historical Construction in Cinematic Ideology in India, 1919-75”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové, Colin MacCabe, Keya Ganguly (Carnegie Mellon University)
Placement: Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Culture and Society, Calcutta Jadavpur University
1995
Ellen Bishop
Dissertation title: “Feminism, Postmodernism, and Science Fiction: Gender and Ways of Thinking Otherwise”
Chair: Philip Smith
Readers: Marica Landy, Lucy Fischer, Dana Polan, Tamara Horowitz (Philosophy)
Placement: Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh
Matthew Tinckom
Dissertation title: “Camp and the Question of Value”
Chair: Jane Feuer
Readers: Lucy Fischer, Marcia Landy, Eric Clarke, Janet Staiger (University of Texas–Austin)
Placement: Associate Professor, Georgetown University
1997
Anne Ciecko
Dissertation title: “Gender and the Politics and Practices of Representation in Contemporary British Cinema”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: James Knapp, Marcia Landy, Colin MacCabe, Sabine Hake (German)
Placement: Associate Professor, Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joy Van Fuqua
Dissertation title: “Telling the Story of AIDS in Popular Culture”
Chair: Jane Feuer
Readers: Eric Clarke, Marcia Landy, Danae Clark (Communication)
Placement: Associate Professor, Communication, Tulane University
Lori Shorr
Dissertation title: “Technology, the Natural and the Other: The Case of Childbirth Representations in Contemporary Popular Culture”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Marcia Landy, Dana Polan, Iris M. Young (Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh)
Placement: Mayor of Philadelphia’s Chief Education Officer
Amy Villarejo
Dissertation title: “Lesbian Rule: Cultural Criticism and the Value of Desire”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové, Colin MacCabe, Gayatri Spivak (Columbia)
Placement: Professor and Chair, Theatre, Film & Dance Department, Cornell University
1998
Patrice Fleck
Dissertation title: “The Emergence of Date Rape: Feminism, Theory, Institutional Discourse, and Popular Culture”
Chair: Jane Feuer
Readers: Nancy Glazener, Lucy Fischer, Carol A. Stabile (Communication)
Placement: Professor, English, Northern Virginia Community College
2000
Patricia Caillé
Dissertation title: “French Film Criticism, Authorship, and National Culture in the Mirror of John Cassavetes’s Body, His Life, and His Work”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Marcia Landy, James Knapp, Danae Clark (Communication)
Placement: Institute of European Studies, Paris
Ellen Kreger
Dissertation title: “In The Shadow of His Language: Language and Feminine Subjectivity in the Cinema”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Lucy Fischer, Lynn Emmanuel, Patrizia Lombardo (French and Italian)
Placement: Associate Dean for Learning and Assessment Services, Mercy College
David Sidore
Dissertation title: “Being In Control: The Ending Of The Information Age”
Chair: Paul Bové
Readers: Jonathan Arac, Marcia Landy, Carol Stabile (Communication)
Placement: Associate Professor, English, Macon State College
2001
Kara Keeling
Dissertation title: “Dig If You Will The Picture”: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové, Colin MacCabe, Amy Villarejo (Cornell), Wahneema Lubiano (Duke)
Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Southern California
2002
Michael G. Aronson
Dissertation title: “Nickels and Dimes: The Movies in a Rampantly American City, 1914-1923”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Moya Luckett, Jane Feuer, Gregory Waller (University of Kentucky)
Placement: Associate Professor, University of Oregon
Hugh S. Manon
Dissertation title: “As Far As Anyone Knows: Fetishism and the Anti-Televisual Paradoxes of
Film Noir”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Valerie Krips, James Knapp, Henry Krips (Communication)
Placement: Associate Professor, Oklahoma State University
2003
Emily T. Bauman
Dissertation Title: “Dreaming in Crisis: Angels and the Allegorical Imagination in Postwar America”
Chair: Colin MacCabe
Readers: Ronald Judy, Jonathan Arac, Nacy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literature)
Placement: Master Teacher of Liberal Studies, New York University
Andrew C. Miller
Dissertation title: “Laying Down the Rules: The American Sports Film Genre From 1872 to 1960”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Jane Feuer, Moya Luckett, Carol Stabile (Communication)
Placement: Associate, Chair, Media Studies, Sacred Heart University
2004
Julia Turner
Dissertation title: “Reading Scars: Circumcision as Textual Trope”
Chair: Philip Smith
Committee: Lucy Fischer, Mariolina Salvatori, Greg Goekjian (Portland State University)
Petra Dierkes-Thrun
Dissertation title: “The Salome Theme in the Wake of Oscar Wilde: Transformative Aesthetics of Sexuality in Modernity”
Chair: Paul Bové
Committee: Eric Clarke, Lucy Fischer, Jonathan Arac, Herbert Lindenberger (Stanford)
Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
2005
Anustup Basu
Dissertation title: “Mantras of the Metropole: Geo-Televisuality and Contemporary Indian Cinema”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové; Eric Clarke; Colin MacCabe; M. Prasad (Film Theory, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad)
Placement: Assistant Professor of Cinema and Theater (TS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Unit for Cinema Studies
Clare Connors
Dissertation title: “Hollywood Youth Narratives and the Family Values Campaign 1980-1992”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Troy Boone, Marcia Landy, Carol Stabile (Communication)
Placement: Visiting Lecturer (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
2006
Dana Och
Dissertation title: “’The World Goes One Way and We Go Another’: Movement, Migration, and Myths of Irish Cinema”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Adam Lowenstein, Colin MacCabe, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Placement: Visiting Lecturer in English (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Daniel Wild
Dissertation title: “The Writing on the Screen: Images of Text in the German Cinema from 1920-1949”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové, Lucy Fischer, Linda Shulte-Sasse (German, McAllister College)
Placement: Adjunct Faculty (NTS), New York University
2007
Amanda Klein
Dissertation title: “Excavating the Ghetto Action Cycle (1991-1996): A Case Study for a Cycle-Based Approach to Genre Theory”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Jane Feuer, Neepa Majumdar, Paula Assood (Cinema and Media Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY)
Placement: Assistant Professor of Film Studies (TS), East Carolina University
2008
Gregory Allen
Dissertation title: “The Word Made Cinematic: The Representation of Jesus in Cinema”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Troy Boone, Adam Lowenstein, Vernell Lillie (Africana Studies)
Manisha Basu
Dissertation title: “Fathers of a Still-Born Past: Hindu Empire, Globality, and the Rhetoric of the Trikaal”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Readers: Paul Bové, Ronald Judy, Nancy Condee (Slavic Languages and Literatures)
Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor of English (NTS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2009
Kara Andersen
Dissertation title: “Immaterial Materiality: Collecting in Live-Action Film, Animation, and Digital Games”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Marcia Landy, Adam Lowenstein, Randall Halle (German)
Placement: Assistant Professor of Film (TS), Brooklyn College
Molly Brown
Dissertation title: “Nation, Nostalgia, and Masculinity: Clinton/Spielberg/Hanks”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Readers: Marcia Landy, Adam Lowenstein, Brent Malin (Communication)
Placement: Visiting Lecturer in the College of General Studies (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Jill Dione
Dissertation title: “Body Image: Fashioning the Postwar American”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Committee: Jane Feuer, Marianne Novy, Carole Stabile (English, University of Oregon)
Placement: Instructor (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Salomé Skvirsky
Dissertation title: “The Ethnic Turn: Political Cinema in Brazil and the United States, 1960-2005”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Committee: Adam Lowenstein, Shalini Puri, Neepa Majumdar, John Beverly (Hispanic Language and Literature)
Placement: Assistant Professor of English (TS), University of Massachusetts, Boston
Kyle Stevens
Dissertation title: “Acting Social: The Cinema of Mike Nichols”
Chair: Lucy Fischer
Committee: Mark Anderson, Marcia Landy, Colin MacCabe, David Shumway (English, Carnegie Mellon University)
Kirsten Strayer
Dissertation title: “Ruins and Riots: Transnational Currents in Mexican Cinema”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Committee: Lucy Fischer, Adam Lowenstein, John Beverly (Hispanic Language and Literature)
Placement: Postdoctoral Visiting Lecturer (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
2010
Tanine Allison
Dissertation title: “Screen Combat: Recreating World War II in American Film and Media”
Chair: Adam Lowenstein
Committee: Lucy Fischer; Marcia Landy; Randall Halle (German)
Placement: Visiting Lecturer in English (NTS), University of Pittsburgh
Amy Borden
Dissertation title: “Modern Kinesis: Motion Picture Technology, Embodiment, and Replayability”
Chair: Marcia Landy
Committee: Lucy Fischer; Adam Lowenstein; Giuseppina Mecchia (French and Italian)
Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor in Film Studies, St. Olaf College