Gaylyn Studlar
Department Chair
Gaylyn Studlar joins the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis after being on the faculty of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for thirteen years and as a part of the faculty of Emory University for eight. At the University of Michigan she was the Rudolf Arnheim Collegiate Professor of Film Studies and served as director of the Program in Film and Media Studies for ten years. During that time, oversaw the program’s development into the Dept. of Screen Arts and Cultures and the marked expansion of its faculty and curricular offerings. In 1996, she received an Excellence in Education Award from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and in 1997, a Provost’s Office Grant to attend the Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration. Professor Studlar’s Ph.D. is from the University of Southern California in cinema studies, where she also received a Master of Music in cello performance. Her research interests include feminist film theory and history, Hollywood cinema, genre studies, Orientalism, and the relationship between film and the other arts. She is the author of This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age and In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic. She has co-edited four anthologies: John Ford Made Westerns, Visions of the East, Reflections in a Male Eye: John Huston and the American Experience, and Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. Her work has been translated into several languages. She recently completed articles on masculinity in the documentaries of Michael Moore, on mother/daughter discourse in 1920s Hollywood fan culture, on the textual queering of Elizabeth Taylor as a child star, and on silent era “vampire” Theda Bara. She is currently completing a book, Precious Charms: The Juvenation of Female Stardom in Classical Hollywood Cinema, for the University of California Press.
Umrath Hall room 251E
Tel: (314) 935-4056
gstudlar@artsci.wustl.edu
WILLIAM PAUL
Prof. William Paul, (Ph.D., Columbia University) has specialized in writing about comedy and film genres: he is the author of Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy and Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror & Comedy, a cultural history that looks at the rise of grossout comedy and horror in the 1970s-80s. Prof. Paul is moving in a different direction with his current project, Movies/Theaters: Architecture, Exhibition, and Film Technology, in which he traces the various and changing ways in which people have viewed movies over their 100-plus year history. He has taught at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, M.I.T., Columbia University, and Haverford College.
Umrath Hall room 252
Tel: (314)935-7903
bpaul@wustl.edu
RICHARD CHAPMAN
Senior Lecturer Richard Chapman is a veteran screenwriter and producer in film and television. He has created, produced and written over two hundred hours of network series, including such credits as SIMON & SIMON (CBS), THE NEW ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (NBC), DISNEY’S ABSENTMINDED PROFESSOR, and the Golden Globe and Emmy nominated HBO Original Movie, LIVE FROM BAGHDAD. His career in motion pictures features MY FELLOW AMERICANS and an adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s novel THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. Chapman has written over twenty motion picture screenplays for such stars as Mel Gibson, Meg Ryan, Alec Baldwin and Bette Midler. He has also produced a feature length documentary, SHOOTING THE MESSENGERS, the behind the scenes story of media coverage of the Vietnam War. It is a comprehensive and controversial study of how journalists from all media (print, electronic, photojournalism) reported the entire war and is culled from over fifty hours of interviews with such icons as Walter Cronkite and the late David Halberstam.
Umrath Hall room 251D
Tel: (314)935-8238
rchapman@wustl.edu.
PIER MARTON
Senior Lecturer Pier Marton, (MFA, UCLA) is a videomaker/new media artist and writer. He has taught courses in film and video production as well as computer graphics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where he also served as chairperson of the production program), UCLA, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Indiana University, among others. Issues of ethnicity, spirituality, audience passivity, and violence have been recurring themes in his video works. His exhibits include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Jewish Museum in N.Y.C., the Beaubourg Museum in Paris, and a variety of other international venues like the Berlin Film Festival and French Television. Mr. Marton's works are in the collections of the M.o.M.A. in New York, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Beaubourg in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Japan Victor Corporation Archives in Japan. He is the recipient of various grants from the N.E.A. and other funding agencies.
Umrath Hall room 253
Tel: (314)935-4055
marton@wustl.edu or visit his website.
PHILIP SEWELL
Assistant Professor Philip Sewell (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) teaches media history and criticism and specializes in television and new media. His dissertation, “The Substance of Things Hoped For: Quality, Cultural Authority, and the Realization of U.S. Television,” explores the evaluation and standardization of television through the varying definitions of quality used by inventors, regulators, producers, industry executives, critics, and audience members. He has previously published work on professional wrestling and worked as coordinating co-editor of The Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film and Television. His research interests include the business and legal culture of the media industries, the mediation of masculinities, and the history of debates about the future of television.
Umrath Hall room 256
Tell: (314) 935-8237
pwsewell@wustl.edu
HUNTER VAUGHAN
Hunter Vaughan received his Ph.D. in cinema and philosophy from the
department of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, England. His
dissertation, ‘From Camera to Code: Godard, Resnais, and the Problem of
Representation in Film Theory,’ uses the early films of Alain Resnais and
Jean-Luc Godard to bridge semiotic and phenomenological approaches to
cinema through a theory of subject-object relations. Dr. Vaughan’s areas
of expertise and interest include film philosophy, transnational cinema,
representations of gender and ethnicity in film and television, and new
media studies. He is currently working on a book project entitled
“Re-framing the Twentieth Century: The French Philosophy of Cinema”.
Having spent many years doing research and teaching at the University of
Oxford and the Universite de Paris, he aims to help incorporate film and
media studies into a wider interdisciplinary approach to critical thought
and cultural studies, the social sciences, and languages.
Umrath Hall 253A
Tel: (314) 935-3406
hvaughan@wustl.edu