About
I’m a Visiting Associate Professor in the Bryan Singer Division of Cinema and Media Studies and received my PhD in from the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining USC in 2016, he was on the Art History and Film & Media Studies faculties at Yale and the Visual & Environmental Studies and English faculties at Harvard. My research and teaching focus on the art and industry of contemporary Hollywood. My first book was The Studios after the Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood, 1970–2010 (Stanford 2015). I am currently completing Hollywood Math and Aftermath: The Economic Image and the Digital Recession.
Other work has been published in journals such as Jump Cut, Media Industries, The Journal of Visual Culture, Media Fields, FlowTV, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. My work has also appeared in edited volumes that include Reading Capitalist Realism, Film and the American Presidency, and the volumes on Directing and Art Direction and Production Design in the Behind the Silver Screen series. I’m a founding member of Post•45 (post45.org), a collective of scholars of American literature and culture. At USC, I am an organizer of the Sound Studies Working Group. Education
Ph.D. Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University
B.A. Social Studies, Harvard University Publications
RECENT ARTICLES:
“Independence and the Consent of the Governed: The Systems and Scales of
Under the Skin,”
Jump Cut, 57 (Fall 2016), special cluster on
Under the Skin.
http://ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-ConnorSkin/index.html
“Making Things Right:
Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens,”
Los Angeles Review of Books, Jan. 7, 2016,
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/making-things-right-star-wars-episode-vii-the-force-awakens
“The Sony Hack: Data and Decision in the Contemporary Studio,”
Media Industries, 2:2 (Nov. 2015), 42–58,
http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/article/view/146/188.
“Boyz N Culver City: Columbia’s Lot,”
Post45, May 15, 2015, special cluster on the ’90s, 25 years later,
http://post45.research.yale.edu/2015/05/boyz-n-culver-city-columbias-lot/.
BOOKS WRITTEN:
The Studios after the Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood, 1970–2010 (Stanford University Press, 2015).
Projects
BIG PROJECTS
Archives of the Ambient: a history of tape recording from World War II to Watergate
World Building and Production Design, from Malick & Fisk to the present
Comedy Networks (a DH project): Kroll Show, Funny or Die, the ’90s standup boom
1977: Culture at the neoliberal takeoff
small projects
A history of Skywalker Ranch (for Brian Jacobson)
Snowpiercer and transmedial auteurism (for Carol Vernallis)
Memberships
Post•45
SCMS
MLA
ASAP
