This new collection of writings on Alfred Hitchcock celebrates the remarkable depth and scope of his artistic achievement in film. It explores his works in relationship both to their social context and to the traditions of critical theory they continue to inspire. The collection draws on the best of current Hitchcock scholarship. It features the work of both new and established scholars such as Laura Mulvey, Slavoj iek, Peter Wollen and James Naremore, and displays the full diversity of critical methods that have characterized the study of this directors films in recent years. The articles are grouped into four thematic sections: Authorship and aesthetics examines Hitchcock as auteur and explores particular aspects of his artistry such as his use of the close-up, the motif of the double, and the neglected topic of humor. French Hitchcock considers the influential reception of the filmmakers work by the critics at Cahiers du cinma in the 1950s, as well as the more recent engagement with Hitchcock by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Poetics and politics of identity investigates how personal and social identity is both articulated and subverted through style and form in Hitchcocks works. The concluding section, Death and transfiguration, addresses the manner in which the spectacle and figuration of death haunts the narrative universe of Hitchcocks films, in particular his subversive masterpiece, Psycho.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Allen is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. He is the author of Projecting Illusion (1995) and co-editor of four books on the aesthetics and philosophy of film:Film Theory and Philosophy (1997),Hitchcock Centenary Essays (1999), Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts (2001) and Camera Obscura/Camera Lucida:Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson (2003). He is the author of numerous articles on Hitchcock and is co-editor with Sidney Gottlieb of Hitchcock Annual.
Miran Bozovic is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Der grosse Andere: Gotteskonzepte in der Philosophie der Neuzeit (1993),An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze and Body in Early Modern Philosophy(2000), and editor of The Panopticon Writings by Jeremy Bentham (1995).
Sidney Gottlieb is Professor of English at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT. He has edited Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews (1995), Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews (2003), and Framing Hitchcock: Selected Essays from the Hitchcock Annual (2002) with Christopher Brookhouse. He is co-editor with Richard Allen of Hitchcock Annual.
Sam Ishii-Gonzles is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University and teaches aesthetics and film history at NYU, Hunter College. He is co-editor with Richard Allen of Hitchcock Centenary Essays (1999) and has published essays on the work of Luis Buuel, David Lynch, and the English painter Francis Bacon. His dissertation considers Deleuzes film semiotics in relation to the artistic practice of Fassbinder, Pasolini, and Warhol. It is entitled Towards a Minor Cinema.
Adam Lowenstein is Assistant Professor of English/Film Studies and Associate Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. His essays have appeared in Cinema Journal, Post Script, and the anthology British Cinema, Past and Present (2000). He is author of Shocking Representation; Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film, forthcoming from Columbia Universtity Press.
Joe McElhaney is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College/City University of New York. His book on Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Vincente Minnelli is forthcoming from Temple University Press.
James Morrison teaches film and literature at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of a critical study, Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors (1998), and Broken Fever (2002), a memoir. He has completed a manuscript on Terrence Malick, and is working on a study of Hollywood, mass culture, and the sublime.
Laura Mulvey is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and Director of the AHRB Centre of British Film and Television Studies. Her essays have been published in Visual and Other Pleasures (1989) and Fetishism and Curiosity (1996). She is also the author of the BFI Film Classic book of Citizen Kane. She has co-directed six films with Peter Wollen as well as Disgraced Monuments with Mark Lewis (Channel Four, 1994).
James Naremore is Chancellors Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University and the author of several books on modern literature and film, including Filmguide to Psycho (1973), Acting in the Cinema (1988), The Films of Vincent Minnelli (1993), and More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (1998).
Walter Raubicheck is Assistant Professor of English at Pace University and co-editor of Hitchcocks Rereleased Films: From Rope to Vertigo (1991).
Angelo Restivo is the author of The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film (2002). His current work examines cinema, space, and visual culture in relation to the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, East Carolina University.
Bettina Rosenbladt teaches German language and culture, including film, at Santa Clara University.
Daniel Antonio Srebnick is a musician and composer who lives in New York City. He has scored theatrical productions, films, and numerous television programs, he has also produced several records.