Department of English and Creative Writing
Wellesley College |
106 Central Street |
Wellesley, MA 02481
Teaching Experience
1984–Present: English Department, Wellesley College (1984–1985: Instructor; 1985–1992: Assistant Professor; 1992–1999: Associate Professor; 1999-present: Professor)
1990 Fall semester: Visiting Professor, Harvard University
1987 Fall semester: Visiting Professor, Poetry Center of the 92nd St. Y
Education
1986 Ph.D. Columbia University, English and Comparative Literature Dissertation: “A Private Art: Melville’s Poetry of Negation”
1982 M.A. Columbia University, English and Comparative Literature 1981-1984 Marjorie Hope Nicholson Fellow at Columbia University
1978 B.A. Princeton University, English
Fellowships
2004, Fall Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship
1990–1991 Andrew Mellon Junior Faculty Fellow at Harvard University
1987–1988 Rockefeller Scholar–in–Residence at the Poetry Center of the 92nd St. Y
Publications
Books
Dark Film, Blood Money: The Economic Unconscious of American Neo-Noir Cinema (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2026)
After the Death of Poetry: Poet and Audience in Contemporary America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993)
Essays
“Charley Varrick and the Incorporation of America in the 1970s,” Film Criticism 49.1 (2025)
“Sidney Furie’s The Entity: Horror and Rape Culture,” Horror Studies 13.2 (October 2022) 251-266
“The Olsen Twins and Internship: The Career Girl as ‘Eager Serf’” (coauthored with Lena McCauley), in Childhood and Celebrity, ed. Jane O’Connor and John Mercer (New York: Routledge, 2017) 99-109
“A Failure to Communicate: Shelley’s ‘Julian and Maddalo,’ Melville’s ‘Pausilippo’” in Melville as Poet: The Art of “Pulsed Life,” ed. Sanford Marovitz (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2013) 149-164
“Negative Influence,” Genre 45.1 (Spring 2012) 195-213
“Violence and Masculinity in Saving Private Ryan,” in Reel Histories: Studies in American Film, ed. Melissa Croteau (Hollywood, CA: Press Americana, 2008) 141-152
“Mulholland Drive Against Vertigo” Raritan 25:3 (Winter 2006) 112–128
“Reflections in a Silver Eye: Lens and Mirror in Blade Runner” (coauthored with Alissa Ferguson), Science Fiction Studies 28.1 (March 2001), 66–76 (Russian translation: Fantastic Cinema: The First Episode, ed. A. Reitblat, N. Samutnii. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2006)
“Incest and Capital in Chinatown,” MLN 114:5 (December 1999), 1092–1109
“Merce Cunningham,” Raritan 8:3 (Winter 1989), 72–90
“Melville’s ‘After the Pleasure Party’: Venus and Virgin,” Papers on Language and Literature 25:4 (Fall 1989), 425–442
“Melville’s ‘Timoleon,’” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 34:2 (2nd Quarter 1987), 83–93
Reviews
“Marianne Moore Remade,” (Marianne Moore, New Collected Poems), Raritan 38.4 (Spring 2019) 40-52
Review of William Marx, The Hatred of Literature, Society 55.6 (December 2018) 560-562
“Little Review,” (Denis Donoghue, Metaphor), Common Knowledge 22.1(January 2016) 137
“Little Review,” (Daniel Tiffany, My Silver Planet), Common Knowledge 21.2
“Little Review,” (Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station) Common Knowledge 20.1 (Winter 2014) 148
“The Unfamiliar Parables of a ‘Poet’s Poet,’” (Irving Feldman, Collected Poems) Boston Globe, October 24, 2004, E9
“Beyond Box–Office,” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Essential Cinema) Boston Globe, 16 May 2004, E6, E8
“Academe’s Embattled Groves,” (books by Gerald Graff, Richard Ohmann, and Derek Bok) Boston Globe, 28 December 2003, D9
“From Altman to Zanuck, Riveting Opinion,” (David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) Boston Globe, 19 January 2003, D9
“America’s Big Heart” (Irving Feldman, Beautiful False Things) Metre 10 (Autumn 2001), 78-82
“In James Merrill’s Works, a Poet’s Path to Greatness,” (James Merrill, Collected Poems) Boston Globe, 9 April 2001, F1–F2
“Ice Field” (Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster) Artforum 38:2 (October 1999), 32
“The New York School of Poetry” (four books by and about New York School poets) Raritan 18:4 (Spring 1999), 130–144
“The State of Poetry” (Seamus Heaney, The Redress of Poetry, Louise Glück, Proofs and Theories, and Mary Kinzie, The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose), Partisan Review 64:4 (Fall 1997), 674–676
“Little Reviews” (Helen Vendler, The Breaking of Style and The Given and the Made), Common Knowledge 6:2 (Fall 1997), 110–112
“The Changing Light” (James Merrill, A Scattering of Salts), The New Republic 212:23 (5 June 1995), 38–43
“On Elizabeth Bishop,” Raritan 14:3 (Winter 1995), 151–163
“Typeface and Redskin” (E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904–1962 and The Enormous Room), The New Republic 211:7 (15 August 1994), 39–42
“Poetry in Review” (four books of verse, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics), Yale Review 81:4 (October 1993), 138–156
“The Night Mirror” (John Hollander, Tesserae and Selected Poetry), The New Republic 209:10 (6 September 1993), 36–40
“Diabolic Intellect” (William Empson, Argufying), Critical Texts 5:3 (1988), 57–59
“Short Reviews” (five books of verse), Poetry 152:2 (May 1988), 98–112, reprinted in part in Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott, ed. Robert Hamner (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1993); reprinted in part in On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things, ed. Tom Andrews (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 87-88
“The Place of Poetry” (three books on contemporary poetry), Yale Review 75:3 (Spring 1986), 429–437
Review of Judith Moffett, James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry, Contemporary Literature 27:1 (Spring 1986), 138–141
“Short Reviews” (seven books of verse), Poetry 147:5 (February 1986), 291–303
Review of William C. Dowling, Jameson, Althusser, Marx, Critical Texts 3:1 (Winter 1985), 47–49
“Brief Reviews” (six books of verse), Poetry 146:1 (April 1985), 38–48
Review of Michael Paul Rogin, Subversive Genealogy: The Politics and Art of Herman Melville, Critical Texts 2:1 (July 1984) 31–34
“This World and the Other” (review article on James Merrill), Poetry 143:2 (November 1983), 101–107
“Language on a Very Plain Level” (John Ashbery, Shadow Train), Poetry 140:4 (July 1982) 236–241, reprinted in Twentieth Century American Literature, ed. Harold Bloom (NY: Chelsea House, 1985), 249–250
“Ask the Fact” (two books of verse), New York Review of Books 29:7 (29 April 1982), 43
“Nature and Self” (two books of verse), New York Times Book Review, 10 May 1981, pp. 12,27
“Take But Degree Away” (four books of verse), Poetry 137:5 (February 1981), 297–302
“A Babel of Tongues” (six books of verse), Poetry 134:4 (July 1979), 226– 233, reprinted in part in The Day I Was Older, ed. Liam Rector (Santa Cruz: Story Line Press, 1989), 246–247
Online
In Media Res Orange Is the New Black Week: “Orange Is the New Black and the Women’s Prison Genre,” 13 March 2014 (http://mediacommons.org/imr/2014/03/04/orange-new-black-and-women-s-prison-genre)
In Media Res “Save Our Show” Week: “Lip Service: The Greatest Glaswegian Sapphic Soap Opera Ever Made,” 17 May 2012 (http://mediacommons.org/imr/2012/05/11/lip-service-greatest-glaswegian-sapphic-soap-opera-ever-made)
Participant, Mediascape roundtable, “Scholars on the Subject of Genre in Contemporary Cinema and Media Studies;” Mediascape Fall 2009 (http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Fall09_RoundTable.html)
Talks
Introduction to The Long Goodbye, Coolidge Corner Theatre 19 June 2025
“Murder is Commitment”: Hit Man and the Killer Spouse, “Spotting Red Flags Symposium: Toxic Screen Romance in the Feel-Bad Era,” King’s College, London, 9 June 2025
Respondent, Patrick Keating: “Glamour and Narrative: Film Noir,” Boston Cinema/Media Seminar, Tufts University, 6 March 2025
“Neo-Noir in a Sick Society: Nightcrawler and the Success Ethic,” PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies Conference, “Neo/noir and Thriller Imaginaries in US American Culture,” online, 7 September 2024
Introduction to Devil in a Blue Dress, Coolidge Corner Theatre “Noirvember” seminar series, 15 November 2022
Introduction to Out of the Past, Coolidge Corner Theatre “Noirvember” seminar series, 15 November 2022
“Charley Varrick and the Incorporation of America in the 1970s,” Flyover Fictions Conference, University of Innsbruck, Austria, 27 May 2022
“The Female Buddy Comedy of Underemployment,” Console-ing Passions Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 19 June 2015
“A Bogus Totality: James Merrill’s Vulnerability,” Modernist Studies Association Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, November 6, 2014
With Lena McCauley (Wellesley 2010): “The Olsen Twins, the Precarious Workplace, and the Culture of Internship,” International Association for Media and History Congress, Leicester, England, July 2013
“The Olsen Twins, No Country for Old Men, and the Culture of Internship,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, IL, 9 March 2013
“‘I don’t know my way around the Village’: Incest, Economics, and Modernity in Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Los Angeles, CA, 20 March 2010
“Authority, Ashbery, and the Voice of Instruction,” Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, 29 December 2009
“Does She or Doesn’t She: The Hairdresser Test and the Epistemology of Gaydar in The L Word,” Southwest Literature Symposium: (Re)Markable Identities, Tempe, AZ, 25 February 2006; IGEL Conference, Munich, 8 August 2006
“Why We (Humanists) Think Badly: And How Cognitive Science Might Help Us Think Better,” Harvard University Humanities Center, Cambridge, MA, 1 February 2006
“Going with the Flow: Centerless Structures in Late Merrill,” Modernist Studies Association, Chicago, 5 November 2005
“The Presence of Whitman in Contemporary Poetry,” Association of Literary Scholars and Critics Conference, San Francisco, 28 October 2001
“Violence and Masculinity in Saving Private Ryan,” Millenium Film Conference, University of Bath, England, 1 July 1999
“Incest and Capital in Chinatown,” Film/Literature Conference, Towson State University, 5 November 1994
“Heroism and the Avant–Garde: John Ashbery and Merce Cunningham,” 20th Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, 28 February 1992; Smith College, 2 October 1992; MLA Convention December 1992
“Merce Cunningham’s Choreography,” Poetry Center of the 92nd St. Y, April 1987
“Styles of Poetic Incommunication: Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo, Melville’s ‘Pausilippo,’” MLA Convention 1986
Courses Taught
Composition; Critical Interpretation; Introduction to Shakespeare; Eighteenth–Century British Novel; Romantic Poetry; Late Modern and Contemporary American Literature; Contemporary American Poetry; American Modernist Poetry and Technology; Three Poets: Dickinson, Moore, and Bishop; Postwar Poetry, Choreography, and Painting; Creative Writing: Poetry; Interpretation and Judgment of Films; Whitman and Dickinson; Introduction to Literary Theory; Film Noir; Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock; Elizabethan Shakespeare; Westerns and Weepers; American Films of the 1970s; Literary Theory; Cinema: Art and Theory; Film Now! An Introduction to the Cinematic Experience; American Literature Now!; Calderwood Seminar: Public Writing on Film and Television; American Nightmares: The Horror Film in America; Film Genre/Genre Films; Great American Short Stories; Global Cinema of the 21st Century; Alfred Hitchcock: Achievement and Influence