Research
My research areas include the history of the American studio system, performance, silent cinema, and film stylistics. My most recent book is John Ford at Work: Production Histories 1927-1939 (John Libbey Publishing/Indiana University Press). Based upon a decade of research utilizing the studio files of Twentieth Century-Fox, RKO and Samuel Goldwyn, it explores the evolution of John Ford’s career in the context of the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s. It delineates the director’s collaborations with the producers, screenwriters, actors and cinematographers that had the most impact on his production practices. It traces the major literary, cinematic and musical sources from which he drew. It considers relevant changes in film technology and seeks to explain how they were incorporated into his style.
For the open access, online edition of Theatre to Cinema, written with Ben Brewster and originally published by Oxford University Press in 1997, click here: https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Thetr2Cnma. The book may be downloaded by parts. Clicking on the individual illustrations in the pdfs of the parts will allow you to download them as image files (you can choose one of four sizes). While previous accounts of the relationship between cinema and theatre have tended to assume that early filmmakers had to break away from the stage in order to establish a specific aesthetic for the new medium, Theatre to Cinema argues that the cinema turned to the pictorial, spectacular tradition of the theatre in the 1910s to establish a model for feature filmmaking. The book traces this influence in the adaptation and transformation of the theatrical tableau, acting styles, and staging techniques, examining such films as Caserini’s Ma ľamor mio non muore!, Tourneur’s Alias Jimmy Valentine and The Whip, Sjöström’s Ingmarssönerna, and various adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Books
- 2025. John Ford at Work: Production Histories 1927-1939. East Barnet: John Libbey Publishing/Indiana University Press.
- 2015. Film Rhythm After Sound: Technology, Music and Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- 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.
Selected Articles
- 2020. “December 7th, The Battle of Midway and John Ford’s Career in the OSS,” Film History, 32, no. 1, https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.32.issue-1
- 2018. “Assunta Spina.” In Silent Features: the Development of Silent Feature Films, 1914-1934. Ed. Steve Neale. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
- 2016. “Making John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley.” Film History, 28, no. 2, https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/issue/34000.
- 2012. “The Innovation of Re-recording in the Hollywood Studios.” Film History, Vol 24, no. 1: 5-34, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.24.1.5.
- 2012. “A Lesson with Eisenstein: Rhythm and Pacing in Ivan the Terrible Part I.” Music and the Moving Image, Vol. 5, no. 1: 24-46, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/10.5406/musimoviimag.5.1.00.
- 2012. “John Stahl: Melodrama, modernism and the problem of naive taste.” Modernism/modernity, Vol. 19, no. 2: 303-320, https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/article/480189.
- 2010. “The Talmadge Sisters: A Forgotten Filmmaking Dynasty.” in Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/j.ctt5hj77g.
- 2005. “Men Without Women: The Avatars of What Price Glory.” Film History, Vol. 17, no. 2/3:307-333, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/3815598?seq=1#page_scan_tab.
Selected Courses Taught
- CA 357 – History of Animation
- 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 950 – The Rise of the Feature Film