Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer who called himself Question Mark, left a lot of questions behind him. One of them obviously speaks for itself: what motivated him to kill thirty-three strangers at Virginia Tech? Another question almost goes without saying: why do we seek refuge behind moral explanations? Like ‘the question mark kid’ the adult…[Read more]

This paper is dedicated to the question of relationships between Ecclesiastes Rabbah and two medieval anthologies Midrash Hagadol and Sefer Maasiot. The paper also deals with relationships of the last two to each other, claiming that Midrash Hagadol used Sefer Maasiot

This paper is a long version of my English paper from 2012, “Body of the Whore, Body of the Story and Metaphor of the Body,” Introduction to Seder Qodashim. A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud V. , Tal Ilan, Monika Brockhaus and Tanja Hidde (eds.), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 305-319 . Some discussions where omitted, though some new find…[Read more]

As Kashmir faces new challenges, our forms of allyship must also evolve. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from its kitchens.

This is the syllabus I’ve designed for my Fall 2019 undergraduate-level Introduction to Film course. I focused the course as a genre study of American horror films. I want my students to be able to consider the socio-political contexts of popular films and to detect and explain the arguments and worldviews produced by film.

From the 2007 remake of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games to Adam Robitel’s Escape Room (2019), the survival game has become a recurring sub-genre of American horror cinema in the last twenty years; however, its haunting presence has yet to be fully analyzed.

The American survival game horror film is uniquely able to render neoliberal con…[Read more]

This essay explores Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” from a Marxist perspective, including its depiction of the Italian bourgeoisie of “il boom” era of the 1950s and 1960s. Numerous frame enlargements are used to substantiate the claim that even the film’s style contributes to its representations of socioeconomic class.

This article investigates the representation of Italian Americans in classical and contemporary Hollywood cinema, expanding the research originally conducted by noted scholar Mirella Affron.

This article compares and contrasts two films that take place in Japan but that were directed by French and American directors. Their “outsider perspective” is explored in terms of their respective films’ themes, characters, and cinematic styles.

This is a review/analysis of the Antonioni film IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN (1982), occasioned by its DVD release by the Criterion Collection.

This essay uses Joseph Campbell’s concept of the Monomyth to analyze both the mythic and contemporary implications of a “popcorn” movie that has numerous social and political subtexts for the Reaganite era.

This essay compares After Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW and Michelangelo Antonioni’s BLOW-UP in terms of their similarities in narrative, characters, and cinematic style.

This essay uses the work of Wilhelm Reich to analyze the “mass psychology of fascism” in Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous Nazi propaganda film, TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.

This article examines the parallels between the space alien in Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and the New Testament account of the life of Jesus Christ.

This book chapter analyzes Steven Spielberg’s supposedly anti-war SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1992) as a pro-war, pro-military, and pro-America movie.

This book chapter analyzes the numerous responses to the famous videotape of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King at the hands of the L.A. Police Department.

This essay describes and analyzes the anthology film EROS (2004), which consists of three short films by major directors: Wong Kar-wei, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni. The focus is on the cinematic depiction of sexuality as it pertains to the national origins of the three shorts: Hong Kong, United States, and Italy.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO set off a trend for midnight movies that brought numerous esoteric films to an insomniac audience. This essay analyzes the surreal movie and its position as an early exemplar of independent cinema exhibited outside the mainstream patterns.

This essay examines the parallels between Frank Capra’s MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and the televised Oliver North hearings 40 years later.