Directory
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Jeff Smith |
Expertise and Activities
My research focuses on questions and issues arising from the study of film music/sound, cognitive film theory, and the American film industry. My first book examines the changes in the film industry that aided the development of the film soundtrack album as a vehicle for film and music cross-promotions. Additionally, the book also examines the effects of this industrial shift on the style of music that appeared in Hollywood films after 1960.
My current book project is a metacritical study of film criticism in relation to the Hollywood blacklist, and attempts to trace the historical development of a particular set of interpretive strategies that have been applied to film texts of the late 1940s and early 1950s. More specifically, my research focuses on two particular critical lenses used to analyze these texts: propaganda and allegory. I also examine the way in which Hollywood's postwar production cycles influenced the operations of these two critical lenses, especially the way that genres themselves offered filmmakers codified narrative templates, which they then used as vehicles for overt and covert political commentary.
Education
- Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995
- M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989
- B.M. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 1985
Honors and Awards
- International Association for the Study of Popular Music, The Sounds of Commerce named runner-up for Best Book-U.S., 1998
Selected Works
Books
- 1998. The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press.
Articles
- 2005. "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Christian: The Strange History of The Robe as Political Allegory." Film Studies 7, 1-15.
- 2003. "Black Faces, White Voices: The Politics of Dubbing in Carmen Jones." The Velvet Light Trap 51, 29-43.
- 1991. "'It Does Something to a Girl. I Don't Know What': The Problem of Female Sexuality in Applause." Cinema Journal 30, No. 2, 47-60.
Chapters
- 2002. "Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema." Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music, Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson, eds. Durham: Duke University Press. 407-430.
- 2000. "'A Good Business Proposition': Dalton Trumbo, Spartacus, and the End of the Blacklist." Controlling Hollywood: On Movie Censorship, Matthew Bernstein, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 206-237.
- 1999. "Movie Music as Moving Music: Emotion, Cognition, and the Film Score." Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith, eds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 146-167.
Courses
- CA 352 - History of World Cinema
- CA 613 - History of the Hollywood Film Score
