Directory

Lea Jacobs Professor Film 6150 Vilas Hall 608-262-1750 jacobs@wisc.edu Office Hours: Thursday 2:30-4:00 And By Appointment

Expertise and Activities

My primary research interests are in the areas of silent cinema (industry history and film form), melodrama and the woman's picture, the history of the American studio system, and methods of film analysis as they relate to both film history and film theory. Current research projects include animation, performance and direction in the Hollywood cinema, and the development of the feature film in the 1910s.

Education

• Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 1985

Honors and Awards

• The Graduate School, University of Wisconsin-Madison , Kellett Mid-Career Award, 2009
• John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Guggenheim Fellowship Award, 2002
• The Graduate School, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Vilas Associate Award, 1997
• Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Resident Fellowship, 1994
• Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, 1987

Selected Works

Books

• 2008. The Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1997. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• 1991. The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film. University of Wisconsin Press, rpt. University of California.

Articles

• 2009. "Unsophisticated Lady: The Vicissitudes of the Maternal Melodrama in Hollywood." Modernism/modernity , 16, no. 1: 123-140.
• 2009. "Naturalism and the Diva: Francesca Bertini in Assunta Spina." http://uwfilmies.pbwiki.com/Bertini.
• 2005. "Men Without Women: The Avatars of What Price Glory." Film History, 17, no. 2/3: 307-333.
• 1998. "Keeping Up with Hawks." Style , 32, no. 3: 402-426.
• 1993. "The Woman's Picture and the Poetics of Melodrama." Camera Obscura, 31: 121-147.

Courses

• CA 454 - Advanced Film Analysis
• CA 556 - History of the American Film Industry in the Era of the Studio System
• CA 613 - John Ford and the Classical Hollywood Cinema
• CA 613 - American Film in the 1920s
• CA 950 - The Rise of the Feature Film