Education

Ph.D., Brandeis University, 2002
B.A., Hunter College, The City University of New York, 1996

Specialization

Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Psychoanalytic Theory and Queer Theory
Gender Studies and Masculinity Studies
Film, Television, and Popular Culture (Hitchcock, The Woman's Film, Film Noir, 1970s Film, De Palma, Contemporary Hollywood, Genre Film and Television)
The History of American Literary Criticism

Courses 

UNDERGRADUATE
Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth Century American Literature
The American Novel to 1914
The Films of Alfred Hitchcock
The American Gothic in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Hawthorne and Henry James: Gender, Romance, and Realism
The American Uncanny: Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe

GRADUATE
American Romanticism
The American Novel to the Civil War
Male Sexuality in the American Renaissance
Intertextuality and the American Renaissance

Research Projects 

My book All the Devils Are Here: American Romanticism and Literary Influence (The University of Virginia Press, 2024) examines the intertextual relationship between antebellum authors Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Fenimore Cooper and Shakespeare and Milton. The American Romantics' uses of English literary tradition reflect not only an interest in their precursors' aesthetic concerns, but also an ongoing engagement with the gender and sexual politics foregrounded in Shakespeare's and Milton’s works. The Introduction uses Melville and Milton to theorize a new framework for the study of literary influence, one that is grounded in narcissism, melancholia, and collaboration, rather than the Oedipal conflict of the Bloomian agon. Subsequent chapters consider connections between The Last of the Mohicans and The Merchant of Venice, The House of the Seven Gables and Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick and King Lear, Pierre and Hamlet, The Blithedale Romance and Much Ado About Nothing, and Hawthorne's and Shakespeare's treatments of Jewish identity and antisemitism. 

My volume on the Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of E. M. Forster's Maurice (1987) for the revived Queer Film Classics series has been published by McGill-Queens University Press (2023), and the essay collection that I co-edited with Brenda Weber, Ryan Murphy's Queer America, has been published by Routledge (2022).

Publications 

BOOKS
   • All the Devils Are Here: American Romanticism and Literary Influence (forthcoming in 2024 from The University of Virginia Press)
   • Maurice: A Queer Film Classic (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023)
   • Ryan Murphy’s Queer America, co-edited with Brenda Weber (Routledge, April 2022)
Ryan Murphy's Queer America - 1st Edition - Brenda R. Weber - David Gr (routledge.com)

Ryan Murphy's Queer America - 1st Edition - Brenda R. Weber - David Book Description. Ryan Murphy is a self-described "gay boy from Indiana," who has grown up to forge a media empire. With an extraordinary list of credits and successful television shows, movies, and documentaries to his name, Murphy can now boast one of the broadest and most successful careers in Hollywood. www.routledge.com

   • The Bionic Woman and Feminist Ethics: An Analysis of the 1970s Television Series (McFarland, 2020)
   • Queering the Terminator: Sexuality and Cyborg Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2017)
   • Intimate Violence: Hitchcock, Sex, and Queer Theory (Oxford University Press, 2017)
   • Ghost Faces: Hollywood and Post-Millennial Masculinity (SUNY Press, March 2016; paperback, 2017) 
   • Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature: Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (Ashgate, March 2014; Routledge, paperback edition, 2016).
   • Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin (The University of Texas Press, 2013).
   • The Fragility of Manhood: Hawthorne, Freud, and the Politics of Gender (The Ohio State University Press, 2012).
   • Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Paperback edition published in September 2013.
   • Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush (The University of Texas Press, 2009).
   • Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek: Allegories of Desire in the Television Series and Films (McFarland, 2009).
   • Men Beyond Desire: Manhood, Sex, and Violation in American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Paperback edition published in September 2012.

RECENT ESSAYS
   • “‘You’re Sexual, Right?’: Ryan Murphy and the Eroticization of Straight Masculinity.” Ryan Murphy’s Queer America, co-edited by Brenda Weber and David Greven.(Routledge, 2022).
   • “Melville’s Shakespeare: Survivors and Stepmothers.” A New Companion to Herman Melville (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture), eds. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge (Wiley-Blackwell; 2nd edition, 2022). Pp. 224-236.
   • “Armie Hammer: The Elusive Appeal of a New Star.” Stellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010, ed. Steven Rybin. Rutgers University Press, 2022.
   • “Movies and Masculinity at a Crossroads: The Films of 2011.” American Cinema of the 2010s: Themes and Variations, ed. Dennis Bingham (Rutgers University Press, 2021), pp. 55-75.
   • “Faltering in the Fight: Pierre and Hamlet.” Memoria Di Shakespeare. A Journal of Shakespearean Studies, 8. doi:10.13133/2283-8759/17611. (2021).
   • “The Women of Get Out: Femininity, Race, and Betrayal in the Contemporary Horror Film,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 22:3, 192-205, DOI: 10.1080/15240657.2021.1961496. (2021).
   • “Sex, the Body, and Health Reform.” A Companion to American Literature, Volume 2. Editor(s): Susan Belasco Theresa Strouth Gaul Linck Johnson Michael Soto. Newark: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2020. Pp. 202-221.
   • “Gender Roles.” In M. Elbert (Ed.), Nathaniel Hawthorne in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. doi:10.1017/9781316271537.015. Solicited Essay. Pp. 146-156. 
   • “Men and Women and Men.” In K. Hayes (Ed.), Herman Melville in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. doi:10.1017/9781316755204.009. Solicited Essay. Pp. 75-84. 
   • “Gena Rowlands in Gloria.” Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances: America Eds: Pomerance, Murray and Stevens, Kyle. Publication Year: 2018. Publisher: Edinburgh University Press. Solicited Essay. Pp. 188-198. 
   • “The Scarlet Letter and Film Adaptation.” Critical Insights: The Scarlet Letter. Editor: Brian Yothers. Salem Press, 2018. Solicited Essay.
   • “Queer Ripley: Minghella, Highsmith, and the Antisocial.” Patricia Highsmith on Screen. Editors: Wieland Schwanebeck, Douglas McFarland. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Solicited Essay. Pp. 121-137. 
   • “Long Love the Queen: Bette Davis, Curtiz, and Female Melodrama.” The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz Editors: R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance. The University of Texas Press, 2018. Solicited Essay. Pp. 68-79.
   • “Valdemar’s Abjection: Poe, Kristeva, Masculinity, and Victim-Monsters,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality (2018), 19:3, pp. 191-203.
   • "The Dark Side of blondeness: Vertigo and race." Screen, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 March 2018, Pages 59–79,
   • “‘Nothing could stop it now!’: Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer, and the Intersections of Desire.” The Cambridge Companion to Erotic Literature. Ed. Bradford K. Mudge. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Solicited Essay.
   • “In the Name of the Father: Billy Budd and the Critics from the Melville Revival to Cold War America.” Critical Insights: Billy Budd, Sailor. Ed. Brian Yothers. Salem Press, 2017. Solicited Essay.
   • “Iterated Horrors: ‘The Monster’ and Manhood.” Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism. Eds. Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden. University of Alabama Press, 2017. Solicited Essay.
   • “The Southern Gothic in Film.” The Palgrave Handbook to the Southern Gothic. Eds. Charles Crow and Susan Castillo. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Solicited Essay.
   • “Hawthorne and Influence: Reframing Tradition,” Introduction to Special Issue of The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review: "Hawthorne and Influence,” vol. 42, no. 1, Spring 2016.
   • “Incest and Intertextuality: Female Desire and Milton’s Legacy in The House of the Seven Gables.” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 62.1 (2016): 39-76.
   • “Jewett’s Mythic Ambivalence: Hellenism, Femininity, and Desire in the Dunnet Landing Stories,” Nineteenth Century Studies, vol. 25 (2015)
   • "Hitchcock and Queer Sexuality." The Cambridge Companion to Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Jonathan Freedman.
   • “‘You Can Put That in the Past Tense’: Heterosexual Ambivalence and Torn Curtain,” The Hitchcock Annual, vol. 19, 2014, 36-81.
   • "The Death-Mother in Psycho: Hitchcock, Femininity, and Queer Desire." Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 15:3, 167-181, 2014
   • “Spectral Men: Femininity, Race, and Traumatic Manhood in the RTV Ghost-Hunter Genre.” Reality Gendervision: Sexuality and Gender on Transatlantic Reality Television. Ed. Brenda R. Weber. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. 316-339.
   • "The Homoerotics of James' Hawthorne: Race, Aesthetics, and American Masculinity," American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, vol. 46, no. 2, Winter 2014.
   • "Intimate Violence: Marnie and Queer Resilience," The Hitchcock Annual, vol. 18, 2013.
   • "I Love You, Brom Bones: Beta Male Comedies and American Culture," Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Issue 30.3, May, 2013
   • "Making a Meal of Manhood: Revisiting Rope and the Question of Hitchcock's Homophobia," Genders, Issue 56, Fall 2012
   • "New Girls and Bandit Brides: Female Narcissism and Lesbian Desire in Fuller's Summer on the Lakes," Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, vol. 29, no. 1 (2012), pp. 37-61.
   • "Hawthorne and the Gender of Jewishness: Anti-Semitism, Aesthetics, and Sexual Politics in The Marble Faun," The Journal of American Culture, vol. 35, no. 2 (June 2012).
   • "American Medusa: Bette Davis, Beyond the Forest, Femininity, and Camp," Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media (no. 53, summer 2011)
   • "Masculinist Theory and Romantic Authorship: Hawthorne, Politics, and Desire," New Literary History, Vol. 39, Issue 4, Autumn 2008.

Recent Presentations

   • “Men in Black: I Confess, Film Noir & the American Gothic.” Alfred Hitchcock and I Confess 70 Years On An International Symposium, September 2023.
   • “Between Suspense and Noir: Hitchcock’s I Confess and the Borderlands of Genre and Gender.” Invited Lecture, The University of Graz, June 2023.
   • “Artists of the Death Drive: Late James, Freud, Sex, and Moral Masochism.” International Henry James Society Conference, Kyoto, Japan, July 2023.
   • “Bette Davis Plays Herself," for panel “Rethinking Female Star Performances: Marie Dressler, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Shelley Winters." Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Detroit, March 2023.
   • “She Isn’t Quite Herself Today: Psycho Before and After Queer Theory.” Invited Lecture, The Film Studies Program at the College of Charleston, April 2023.
   • “Sex and the Death Drive: Rereading Late Henry James.” Society for Critical Exchange Theory Institute, March 2023.
   • “Misreading American Literary History.” ALA Symposium on The Historical Imagination in American Literature, Santa Fe, NM, October 27-29, 2022.
   • “The Masculinities of Rebecca.” Rebecca at 80 --University of Falmouth. Cornwall, England, June 22-23, 2022.
   • “The Torment of Mildness: Melville, Bloom, and a New Theory of Literary Influence.” Melville’s Energies: Aesthetics, Politics, Ecologies. Thirteenth International Melville Society Conference. Paris, June 27-30, 2022.
   • “The Gendered Veil: Poe, Hawthorne, Femininity, and Intertextuality.” The Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference: Poe Takes Boston! Boston, MA, April 7-10, 2022.
   • Roundtable Discussion, “Queer Star Trek,” Queer Futures & Future Queers: Discussing the True Inclusivity of  Star Trek’s Apparent Utopia, Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2021. 
   • “When the Villain Winces: Ray Milland and Villainous Empathy in Dial M for Murder (1954).” Hitchcock and Performance Symposium, June 11-12, 2021. 
   • “Secular Judaism and American Scripture: Bloom’s Shaping of the Canon.” Panel: “But Is It Really Jewish Literature?” Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium, Miami, November 10-13, 2019.
   • “A New Mirror: The Feminine versus the Queer in Under Capricorn.” Under Capricorn + 70. Hitchcock Conference at Kings College, London, September 5-6, 2019.
   • “Savage Old Mothers and Motherless Seas: Masculinity and the Maternal in Melville and Whitman.” Over_Seas: Melville, Whitman, and All the Intrepid Sailors. School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, July 3-5, 2019.
   • “Melville’s Queer Edgar: The Shakespearean Origins of Moby-Dick.”12th International Melville Society Conference: Melville’s Origins. New York University, June 17-21, 2019.
   • “Melville, Mothers, and Motherless Worlds: Femininity and Shakespearean Influence in Moby-Dick.” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, May 23 – 26, 2019.
   • “Whose Literary Influence? Douglass, Shakespeare, and American Romanticism.” Frederick Douglass Across and Against Times, Places, and Disciplines. Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France. October 11-13, 2018.
   • “Veiled Influence: Shakespeare in The Blithedale Romance.” International Poe and Hawthorne Conference. Kyoto, Japan, June 21-24.
   • “The Childhood of American Art: Fiedler, Billy Budd, and the American Classics.” American Literature Association Conference. San Francisco, California, May 24-27, 2018.
   • “Sculpting the Word: Pierre, Enceladus, and the Aesthetics of Intransigence.” Melville at King’s. King’s College, London, UK, June 27-30, 2017.
   • “ ‘Greedily she engorg’d’: Seduction and Influence in Paradise Lost.” “Literary Influence: Queer Reframings,” Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2017.
   • "CMS Workshop, “Cruising ‘Cruising’ (1980): Rethinking Strategies and Approaches to a Controversial Film,” Society or Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Atlanta, March 30-April 3, 2016.
   • “Hawthorne and Milton: Remapping Intertextuality,” Modern Language Association Convention, Austin, January 7-10, 2016.
   • “Spenser in Blithedale: Gender and Allegory,” American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 2015.
   • "Hepzibah in the Mirror," Hawthorne in the Berkshires, conference of The Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, North Adams, MA, June 12-15, 2014.
   • "'You’re a Strange Girl, Charlie’ ": Femininity, the Dandy, and The Social Implications of Shadow of a Doubt,""Hitchcock, Women, and Queer Sexuality," Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Seattle, March 19-23, 2014 (organized panel; co-presenters Tania Modleski, Lee Edelman, Joseph Litvak, and Susan White).
   • "Piercing the Sonorous Envelope: Singing for the Feminine Aesthetic in ‘Circumstance,'" "Antebellum Affects:Literature and Theory," Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, June 9-12, 2014.
   • "Manly Love and Its Discontents: Melville, Whitman, and the Dream of American. Brotherhood,"Melville and Whitman in Washington, DC: The Civil War and After, Washington, DC, June 4-7, 2013.
   • "The Return of the Father: Deadwood and the Contemporary Gender Politics of Complexity," Mediating Masculine Hegemony in the Modern American Empire, American Studies Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 15-18, 2012
   • "Hawthorne, Freud, and Visual Identity in the 1850s: The Marble Faun and Hawthorne's Homoerotic Hellenism," Conversazioni in Italia: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, Florence, June 2012
   • "Plata Quemada (Burnt Money) and the Problem of the Queer Villain." "Global Masculinities: Film and Gender Crisis" (Panel Chair and Organizer), American Comparative Literature Association, Providence, RI, March, 2012.
   • "Desire in Marble: Vision, Classical Antiquity, and Homoerotic Spectacle in Melville's Travel Writing." Melville and Rome: Empire, Democracy, Belief, Art. The Eighth International Melville Conference. Rome, Italy: 22-26 June 2011.
   • "Poe's Mythologies: Transatlantic Nineteenth Century Hellenism as World Literature." American Comparative Literature Association, Vancouver, Canada, April, 2011.
   • "I Love You, Brom Bones": Beta Male Comedies, Homophobia, and the History of American Masculinity." Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, March 2011.
   • "Frederick Crews and Freud: Sexuality and Cultural Backlash." Freud After Derrida, Winnipeg, Canada, October 2010.

Awards

   • The Russell Research Award (2020), The University of South Carolina
   • Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Ghost Faces (2017)
   • The Phyllis W. Meadow Award for Excellence in Psychoanalytic Writing (Honorable Mention, 2007)