Associate Professor, French and Italian
Adjunct Associate Professor, History
Adjunct Associate Professor, The Media School
I have an interdisciplinary academic background, combining a B.A. and M.A. in French Language and Literature from the University of Virginia with a Ph.D. in French Civilization from Pennsylvania State University.
My primary research field is twentieth-century social, political, and cultural history through film (fiction and documentary), with a focus on the 1930s and 40s. In early 2016 my book Marcel Pagnol, the first comprehensive overview of the director's career in theater and cinema, was published by Manchester University Press as part of its "French Film Directors" series. An edited collection of essays titled "The Politics of French and German Cinema, 1930-1945" is forthcoming with Berghahn Books. Another developing project, under contract with Manchester University Press, is a book on the documentary films of Marcel Ophüls.
My professional activities include serving as co-editor of Modern and Contemporary France (2007-14), associate editor of The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television (since 2005), and as an editorial board member for French History (2007-17) and French Historical Studies (2010-13). I also work with International Historic Films in Chicago as academic advisor and producer of DVDs related to France during the Second World War. The first such project, published in 2011, was a restored and subtitled edition of Forces Occultes (Hidden Forces), an anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic propaganda film made by French collaborationists in 1942. A second title, in 2012, is Salut à la France / A Salute to France, a dual-language docu-drama that Jean Renoir made for the American Office of War Information in 1944 to promote American-British-French solidarity just prior to D-Day.
The College of Arts