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Robert Miklitsch

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Professor Emeritus

Recent News

Education

Ph.D., English. SUNY at Buffalo, Spring 1981

M.A., Writing Seminars, The Johns Hopkins University, 1977

B.A., University of Notre Dame, 1975

Scholarly Focus

  • Film (noir, melodrama, gangster film, Hollywood musical)
  • Music (pop, jazz, classical)
  • Media (TV, video)
  • Popular-cultural studies

Publications

Books

I Died a Million Times: Gangster Noir in Midcentury America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021). 269 pp.

The Red and the Black: American Film Noir in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017). 284 pp.

Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, February, 2011. 300 pp.

Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). 262 pp.

From Hegel to Madonna: Towards a General Economy of “Commodity Fetishism” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 224 pp.

Books: Edited Collections

Kiss the Blood off My Hands: Re-Screening Classic American Film Noir.

Psycho-Marxism: Marxism and Psycho-Analysis Late in the Twentieth Century, ed. Robert
Miklitsch (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). 280 pp.

Book Chapters

“Cine-Telescopic Psyche: 1950s Serial Killers and Sexual Psycho Pathology in The Sniper and While the City Sleeps,” Mind Reeling: Psychopathology on Screen, ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh Press, 2020), 101-127.

“Rocking Around the Clock: Jailhouse Rock, A Hard Day’s Night, and the ‘Jukebox’ Biopic,” A Companion to the Biopic, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), 353-374.

“‘Easy Living’: From The Price of Salt (78) to Carol (EP),” ed. Wieland Schwanabeck and Douglas McFarland, Highsmith on Screen (forthcoming: London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 159-174. 

 “Jazz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn,” The Many Lives of Michael Curtiz, ed. Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 145-157.

“The Rogue Cop Film: Theft, Adaptation, and Prototypicality in Where the Sidewalk Ends,” Film Noir Prototypes: Origins of the Movement, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause/Hal Leonard, 2018), 300-319.

“Rogue Nation, 1954: William McGivern, Class Consciousness, and the ‘Rogue Cop’ Film,” Emerging American Genres in the Cold War Era, ed. Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 99-122.

 “Hollywood Noir: Scripting the Death of Romance in Sunset Blvd. and In a Lonely Place,” Film Noir: Light and Shadow­, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (Milwaukee, WI: Applause, 2017): 152-170.

 “Split/Screen: Sound/Source Music in The Stranger/Criss Cross,” Film Noir: The Classic Tradition, ed. R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Fall 2014): 122-142.

 “Periodizing Classic Noir: From Stranger on the Third Floor to the ‘Thrillers of Tomorrow,’” Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 193-218.

“Back to Black: ‘Crime Melodrama,’ Docu-Melo-Noir, and the ‘Red Menace’ Film,” Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 1-16.

“Audio-Noir: Audiovisuality in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Neo-Noir, ed. Mark Bould et. Al (London, UK: Wallflower Press, 2009): 28-43.

“Real Fantasies: Connie Stevens, Silencio, and Other Sonic Phenomena in Mulholland Drive,” Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound, ed. Jay Beck and Anthony Grajeda (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008): 233-248.

“Flesh for Fantasy: Aesthetics, the Fantasmatic, and Film Noir,” Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Essays on Slavoj Zizek, ed. Geoff Boucher et al. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005): 17-39

“Beginnings and Endings: Mark Strand’s ‘Untelling,’” Poetry Criticism, ed. Larry Trudeau Detroit: Gale, 2005): 29-42 [reprint].

“Difference: Roland Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,” Roland Barthes, ed. Mike Gane and Nicholas Gane (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 557-570 [reprint].

“Assembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Glück,” The Twayne Companion to Literature in English, ed. R.H.W. Dillard and Amanda Cockrell (New York: Twayne, 2003): 347-360 [reprint].

“The Politics of Teaching Literature,” Beyond the Corporate University, ed. Henry Giroux and Kostas Myrsiades (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001): 267-285 [reprint].

“Punk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risks and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,” Education and Cultural Studies: Toward a Performative Practice, ed. Henry Giroux and Patrick Shannon (New York: Routledge, 1997): 259-270 [reprint].

“News from Somewhere: Reading Raymond Williams’ Readers,” Cultural Materialism, ed. Christopher Prendergast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995): 71-90.

“The Politics of Teaching Literature,” Margins in the Classroom: Teaching Literature, ed. Kostas and Linda Myrsiades (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 71-90 [reprint].

“Godard/Auden/Martini: Framing the Annunciation Scene,” Perspectives on Perception: Philosophy, Art, and Literature, ed. Mary Ann Caws (New York: Peter Lang, 1989): 95-122.

“Incognito Lounge,” Contemporary Literary Criticism, ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Maturz (Detroit: Gale, 1989): 567-571 [reprint].

Articles

Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, and the ‘Woman in Red,’” Mystery Tribune 3 (Fall 2017): 119-129. “The Red and the Black: Gender, Genre, and the Romance of (Anti- ) Communism in The Woman on Pier 13,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, Media Studies 29, 3 (Fall 2014): 127-147.

 “Pink Is the New Black: 50s Color Noir, the ‘Fatal Man,’ and the ‘Femme’ Detective in A Kiss before Dying,” Popular Culture Review 25, 2 (Summer 2014): 95-107.

 “Fear of a Red Planet: I Was a Communist for the FBI as ‘Black Film,’” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41, 1 (2013): 43-54.

“Audiophilia: Audiovisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in Jackie Brown,” Screen 45, No. 4 (Winter 2004): 287-304.

“Shot/Counter-Shot: Gender, Sexuality, and Postmodern Style in The Sopranos,” New Review of Film and Television Studies 2, No. 2 (November, 2004): 16-29.

“Gen-X TV: Political-Libidinal Structures of Feeling in Melrose Place,” Journal of Film and Video 55, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 16-29.

“Zizek and Popular Culture: Art for Lacan’s Sake,” Journal of Advanced Composition 21, No. 3 (Summer 2001): 605-612.

“Rock ‘n’ Theory: Theory, Autobiography, Cultural Studies, and the Death of Rock,” Postmodern Culture 9, No. 2 (January 1999): [27 pp].

“Introduction,” Marxism and Psychoanalysis Late in the Twentieth Century, South Atlantic Quarterly 97, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 227-234.

“‘Going through the Fantasy’: Screening Slavoj Zizek,” South Atlantic Quarterly 97, No. 2 (Spring 1998): 475-507.

“The Commodity-Body-Sign: Toward a General Economy of ‘Commodity Fetishism,’” Cultural Critique 33 (Spring 1996): 5-40.

“The Rhetoric of Post-Marxism: Discourse and Institutionality,” Social Text 45 (Winter 1995): 165-199.

“Total Recall: Production, Revolution, Simulation Alienation-Effect,” Camera Obscura 32 (Summer 1995): 5-40.

“Sturm und Searle: Intervention, Transformation, Democratization,” Mediations 16, No. 2 (May 1992): 24-29.

“Troping Prostitution: Two or Three Things about Post-Marxism and Feminism,” Genders 12 (Winter 1991): 120-139.

“Performing Difference: Brecht, Galileo, and the ‘Regime of Quotations,’” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6, No. 1 (Fall 1991): 15-28.

“The Politics of Teaching Literature: The ‘Paedagogical Effect,’” College Literature 17, Numbers 2/3 (June/October 1990): 23-35.

“The Poppies of Practical Criticism: ‘Rabbi, Read the Phases of This Difference,’” Diacritics 17, No. 2 (Summer 1987): 23-35.

“The Critic as Poet, Poet as Critic: Randall Jarrell, Deconstruction, and ‘Dirty Silence,’” American Poetry 1, No. 2 (Winter 1984): 35-48.

“Difference: Roland Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,” Boundary 2, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Fall 1983): 101-114.

“Assembling a Landscape: The Poetry of Louise Glück,” The Hollins Critic 19, No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.

“Praise: The Poetry of Robert Hass,” The Hollins Critic 19, No. 4 (October 1982): 1-13.

“Ut Pictura Poesis: Reduction in Contemporary American Painting and Poetry,” The American Poetry Review 9, No. 6 (Winter1980): 18-32.

“‘A Postcard from the Volcano’: An Appreciation,” The Wallace Stevens Journal 3, Numbers ¾ (Spring 1979): 36-40.

“Beginnings and Endings: Mark Strand’s ‘Untelling,’” The Literary Review 21, No. 3 (Spring 1979): 357-373.

Review Essays

“Lust, Fantasy, Male Hysteria: Clint Eastwood (Un-) Bound,” Minnesota Review 43/44 (Fall 1995): 118-135.

“Punk Pedagogy, or Performing Contradiction: The Risk and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 16, No. 1 (1994): 57-67.

“The Language of Literary History: Dead or Alive?,” The Yale Review 77, No. 1 (Autumn 1987): 103-114.

“News from Somewhere: On Raymond Williams,” Textual Practice 6, No. 1 (Spring 1992): 67-78.

“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (on John Ashbery), Contemporary Literature 21, No. 3 (Spring 1980): 118-135.

Reviews

“Commentary: ‘Suffering in Rhythm: The Haunting Melody of Film Noir,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies 5, 2 (Summer 2018): 7-10. http://mediacommons.org/user/4906.

“Dashiell Hammett and Classical Hollywood Cinema,” Literature/Film Quarterly 43, 3 (Summer 2015): 236-240.

The Maltese Touch of Evil: Film Noir and Potential Criticism,” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and History 43, No. 2 (Fall 2013): 80-83.

“Film Noir” (on Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton’s Panorama of American Film Noir and Paula Rabinowitz’s Black & White & Noir), Film Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 2004): 66-68.

“From Classic Rock to Gangsta Rap” (on Anthony DeCurtis’ Rocking My Life Away), Southern Review 33, No. 1 (Fall 2000): 117-120.

“Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said and Spivak” (Asha Varadharajan), Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 43 (1996 [1995]): 144-148.

“The Incognito Lounge” (Dennis Johnson), The Iowa Review 13, Numbers 3/4 (1982/83): 246-250.

Sidebars

“Dashiell Hammett,” Books to Film: Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Works, Vol. 1, ed. Keith Barry Grant (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2017).

Papers/Presentations

“The Rhetoric of Rape: Sexual Violence in Roman Polanski’s 1970s Films in the #MeToo Era,” International Conference on Communication, Film, and Media (New York: NY: April 23-24, 2020 [accepted/conference cancelled]).

“Ripley in Italy: Visual Culture and Musical Counterpoint in Anthony Minghella’s Talented Mr. Ripley,” 4th International Conference on Visual Culture, Pontificia Università della Santa Croce (Rome, Italy: May 2108)

“Jazz Me Blues: Lo-Fi, Fantasy, Audiovisuality in Young Man with a Horn,” Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School, New York University (New York, NY: May 2017).

“Odds for Tomorrow: Race, Melo-Policier, and the Trope of Oriental Inscrutability in Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Atlanta, GA: March, 2016).

“Research,” Edgar Allan Poe Symposium, Mystery Writers of America (New York, NY: April 29, 2015).

“Atomic ‘Cowboys’ and Un-American ‘Indians’: 50s Noir, Nuclear Espionage, and Anti-Communism in The Atomic City,” Annual Conference, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (Chicago, IL: March 2104).

“Technicolor Noir: Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, and the ‘Woman in Red,’” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March, 2013).

“The Red and the Black: Chiaroscuro and HUAC, Bad Blondes and Flower Carriers in I Married a Communist,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boston, MA: March, 2012).

“House Sound: Reverb, Voice-Over, and Off-Screen Sound in Early RKO Film Noir,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Los Angeles, CA: March 2010).

“Audio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: July 2008)

 “Audio Noir: Sound and Music in Neo-Modernist Noir,” Humanities Center, Otterbein College (Westerville, OH: October 25, 2007).

 “Soundscape, Sound Space: Jive, Hepcats, and the Tutti Frutti Hat in Phantom Lady,” In a Man’s World: Women in Classical Hollywood, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March 2007).

“Noir/Musical: Gene Kelly, Cover Girl, and the Pierrot Noir,” Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: June/July 2006).

“‘Once More with Feeling’: Music, Adorno, and the Magic Spell of Lesbian Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Institute for Culture and Society, Georgetown University  (Washington, DC: June 2005).

"Retro-Pastiche or Hollywood Critique?: David Lynch's Mulholland Drive," Screen Studies Conference (Glasgow, Scotland: July 2004).

"Flesh for Fantasy: Zizek, Film Noir, and the Frame of Fantasy,” Reading Zizek, Reading Film, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Minneapolis, MN: March 2003).

"Bada Bing! Sex, Death, and Gangsta Psychoanalysis in The Sopranos," The New Quality Television: HBO Original Programming, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Studies (Denver, CO: May 2002).

"Queer Surplus-Value: The Talented Mr. Ripley," Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Washington, D.C.: May 2001).

Chair: The Pleasure Principle: Camp, Kitsch, Audio-Scopophilia and Other Pleasures, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, IL: March 2000).

"Ciné-Audio-Scopophilia: Audiovisual Pleasure and Contemporary Narrative Film," The Pleasure Principle, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago: March 2000).

"Post-Post-Grand Theory: Suture, Screen, and the Future of Cinema Studies," The Production of Theory, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boca Raton, FL: April 1999).

Chair: Fantasy, Special Session, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1999).

"Vox Rock Theory: Rock Music in the Discourse of Cultural Studies," The New Rock Writing, Modern Language Association (Toronto, Canada: December 1997).

"Out of the Past: Psycho-Historicism," Psychoanalysis and Social Change (Washington, D.C.: November 1997).

"Back to the Future?: Screen, ‘The Suture Scenario,' and the Futurity of Film Theory," Whither Film Theory?, Modern Language Association (Washington, DC: December 1996).

"Découpage MTV: Cinema, Music Television, and the Postmodern Real," Teaching Film Theory in the Age of MTV, Modern Language Association (Washington, DC: December 1996).

"Vicissitudes of Verfallsgeschichte: bell hooks on Madonna in Black & White," Psychoanalysis and Race, Psychoanalysis and Social Change (Washington, DC: November, 1996).

"On Popular Music: From Adorno to the Clash," Institute for Culture and Society, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA: June 1996).

Chair: Crypto-Male Males: Cinematic Masculinities in the 1990s, Special Session, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1995).

"Bell Curves and Idiots Savants: Ideologies of Masculinity in Forrest Gump," Crypto-Male Males, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1995).

"Hegemony of X: Social and Political Economy in Melrose Place," Western Humanities, Pedagogy, & the Public Sphere, Cultural Studies Symposium (Manhattan, Kansas: March 1995).

"‘Going Through the Fantasy’: Introducing Slavoj Zizek," Institute for Culture and Society, Trinity College (Hartford, CT: June 1994).

Chair: Psycho-Marxism: From A(lthusser) to Z(izek),  Special Session, Modern Language Association (Toronto, Canada: December 1993).

"Total Recall: Production, Revolution, Simulation Alienation-Effect," Institute for Culture and Society, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA: June 1993).

"Prise de Position: The Place and Present Future of the History of Literary Theory," Rethinking the History of Literary Theory, Midwest Modern Language Association (St. Louis, MO: November 1992).

"Battle of the Post-Moderns," Marxism and the New World Order: Crisis and Possibilities (Amherst, MA: November 1992).

"Commodity Fetishism: Freud, Marx, and Warhol's Sticky Fingers," Institute for Culture and Society, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA: June 1992).

"Punk Pedagogy: The Risks and Rewards of (Anti-) Transference," The Classroom: Political or Politicized?, College English Association of Ohio (Columbus, OH: April 1992).

"Sturm und Searle: Intervention, Transformation, Democratization," Under Pressure: Political Intervention in the Academy, Modern Language Association (San Francisco, CA: December 1991).

"Resisting Negation: The Work of Affirmation" (extended version), Problems of Affirmation in Cultural Theory, The Society for Critical Exchange (Cleveland, OH: October 1991).

"Resisting Negation: The Work of Affirmation," Problems of Affirmation in Cultural Theory, Modern Language Association (Chicago, IL: December 1990).

"The Origin and Economy of Cultural Studies: Reading Raymond Williams," Crossing the Disciplines: Cultural Studies in the 1990s (Norman, Oklahoma: October 1990).

"Political Literacy: E.D. Hirsch, The Black Panthers, and the 'Paedagogical Effect,'" The Role of Theory in the Undergraduate Classroom: Curriculum, Pedagogy, Politics (Indiana, PA: September 1990).

"Capitalism-as-Prostitution: Marx/Engels, 'Crude Communism,' and the 'Community of Women,'" Capitalism and Psychoanalysis: The 19th Century and After, Conference on Feminism and Representation (Providence, RI: April 1989).

"Reading Differently: Galileo in Quotations," (Re)Presenting Brecht: Poststructural Readings, International Brecht Society, Modern Language Association (San Francisco, CA: December 1987).

“Capitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism,” Marxism and Literature, Northeast Modern Language Association (Boston, MA: April 1987).

“'Capitalism, Modernism, Postmodernism': Re-Marx on Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory,”Ideologies of Modernism (West Chester, PA: October 1986).