Current research
What Price Hollywood?: GENDER And Sex In THE FILMS OF GEORGE CUKOR
George Cukor with Grant and
Hepburn, on the set of Holiday (1938)
Forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky, Spring 2020.
George Cukor is perhaps best known as a “woman’s director.” This homophobic slur also functioned as a backhanded compliment for his ability to direct successful women-centered films featuring “difficult” (strong, independent) female stars. While we, like Cukor himself, are right to eschew such a limiting label, close studies of Cukor-directed films (more than 50 across 50 years) show sustained attention to gender and sexuality in often surprising ways, inflected by ethnicity, class, and nationality. Utilizing diverse methodologies and an intersectional feminist approach, chapters explore clusters of films in case study fashion. Topics range women's friendships and the male alcoholic to queering the musical and ethnic assimilation in the 1950s.
Gina Logue interviews me on gender and Cukor in 2012 for MTSU News.
Mike Browning created this video based on interview excerpts:
George Cukor is perhaps best known as a “woman’s director.” This homophobic slur also functioned as a backhanded compliment for his ability to direct successful women-centered films featuring “difficult” (strong, independent) female stars. While we, like Cukor himself, are right to eschew such a limiting label, close studies of Cukor-directed films (more than 50 across 50 years) show sustained attention to gender and sexuality in often surprising ways, inflected by ethnicity, class, and nationality. Utilizing diverse methodologies and an intersectional feminist approach, chapters explore clusters of films in case study fashion. Topics range women's friendships and the male alcoholic to queering the musical and ethnic assimilation in the 1950s.
Gina Logue interviews me on gender and Cukor in 2012 for MTSU News.
Mike Browning created this video based on interview excerpts:
Racial DARKNESS IN ACE IN THE HOLE (ARTICLE)
Box office failure Ace in the Hole (1951) has received little scholarly attention beyond its prescient critique of tabloid journalism. This article focuses on race issues in film content, style, and production context. Sections discuss Native American representation, noir anxiety related to racial borders and national boundaries, and manifestations of Holocaust survivor guilt that afflicted the fillm's Jewish emigre director-writer-producer Billy Wilder.
UNEXPECTED NOIR (EDITED COLLECTION)
To be co-edited with film scholars Christopher Weedman and Alex Naylor, this volume of academic essays is currently in the planning stages. The goal is a collection that explores film noir style and content beyond the crime film. Chapters written by a variety of scholars will offer case studies of specific films, directors, and approaches.
