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Cinema Studies

Education

B.A., Oxford; M.A., East Anglia; Ph.D., California (Los Angeles).

Biography

My research interests as a scholar began in the areas of film theory and the philosophy of film. My first book, Projecting Illusion (Cambridge University Press, 1997), articulated a sophisticated version of the illusion theory of representation as a basis for defending a psychoanalytic conception of spectatorship. In addition, I edited one of the first anthologies of analytic film theory, in the philosophical sense of "analytic," entitled Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1999). Without relinquishing a belief in the value of conceptual clarity within humanistic inquiry, my work has increasingly moved towards a revised notion of theory manifest in my anthology Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts (co-edited by Malcolm Turvey; Routledge, 2001), and a focus upon film poetics and aesthetics, mainly through research on Hitchcock. My recent book, Hitchcock's Romantic Irony (Columbia University Press, 2007) represents the culmination of that research; research which also includes two Hitchcock anthologies and editorship of the journal of Hitchcock studies, The Hitchcock Annual. Latterly, I have become interested in the poetics and aesthetics of Hindi cinema, whose most recent avatar is known as Bollywood, and I am collaborating on a book upon the subject.

Author, Projecting Illusion: Film Spectatorship and the Impression of Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Hitchcock's Romantic Irony (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Editor, Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997) with Murray Smith. Editor, Hitchcock Centenary Essays (British Film Institute, 1999) and Hitchcock: Past and Future (London: Routledge, 2004) with Sam Ishii-Gonzales. Editor, Wittgenstein, Humanistic Understanding, and the Arts (Routledge, 2001) and Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003) with Malcolm Turvey. Editor, Hitchcock Annual since 2001. Articles in Cinema Journal, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Framework, Hitchcock Annual, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, New German Critique, Persistence of Vision,  Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, October, and Screen.