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Graduate Students in Screen Studies work closely with faculty on a wide range of research projects at both the M.A. and Ph.D. level. Though graduate students from all programs may participate in Screen Studies seminars, the following students have identified Screen Studies as their major research area.

James Cooper  M.A. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   contemporary horror films
          •   violence in American cinema
          •   politics in classic and contemporary cinema
          •   children's cinema and mythology
          •   queer cinema
          •   directors David Lynch, Ridley Scott, Wes Craven, Peter Jackson,
               Alfonso Curan
          •   theorists Carol Clover, Christopher Sharrett, John Cawelti
     Works in Progress
          •  "Demythologizing Reagan and Eighties Horror: The Story of the
               Nineties Slasher Film."
          •   "On Hannibal." Oklahoma Film and Video Studies Society
               Conference at the University of Central Oklahoma, November 2004


Chelsey Crawford  Ph.D. Student 
     Areas of Interest
          •   films scores: John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, Danny Elfman
          •   themes of family, religion and superstition in Hitchcock's films
          •   neo-noir
          •   "remarriage comedies" (as defined by Stanley Cavell)
          •   representations on immigrant communities in Classical Hollywood
          •   the sports film
          •   directors Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Martin Scorsese, Davide
               Lynch and Guillermo del Toroi
     Works in Progress
          •   Untitled article on the films of Judd Apatow and the recontextualization
               of the classical "remarriage comedy."
          •   Untitled article on sexuality in Closer as a metaphor for consumerism
               and jealousy in contemporary American society


Brad Foster  Ph.D. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   Representations of Masculinity in Film
          •   Genre Studies--Western, Horror, War Films
          •   Post World War II Hollywood
     Works in Progress
          •  "Intertextual and Layered Dialogues of Covergence in Stranger Than
               Fiction"
     Conference Presentations
          •  "Rebel Men and the Absent Woman in 1960s Westerns." Film, Television
               and the 1960s Conference, Plymouth NH, October 2007
          •  "Men Resisting Change: Second-Wave Feminism and Western Films
               from 1960-1979." PCAS/ACAS Popular and American Culture Associations
               in the South, Jacksonville FL, September 2007; this essay won the Roger
               Rollin Award for Distinguished Graduate Work--Best Graduate Paper
          •  "The Changing Scape of the West: Masculinity and Domenticity in the
               South, Savannah GA, October 2006
               Western." PCAS/ACAS Popular and American Culture Associations in the
          •  "A Turn to the Cinematic: Italian Neo-Realist Representation of the Human
               Condition." GEAIGC Graduate English Association International Graduate
               Conference, Georgia State University, Atlanta GA, September 2006


Shane Gilley  Ph.D. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   Hip Hop culture, music videos, documentary film, Italian Giallo
          •   Directors Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Dario Argento, P.T. Anderson
          •   Theorists Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Mikhail Bakhtin
     Publications
          •   Entry on Tupac Shakur. Greenwood Press Encyclopedia of African
               American Literature, September 2005
     Works in Progress
          •  "A Look at Film Rhetoric: Native Land and Mikhail Bakhtin," theorizing the
               pro-union, Socialist documentary Native Land vis-à-vis the  Bakhtinian
               ideas of heteroglossia and participation in dialogic
     Conference Presentations
          •  "Politics is Perception:' Motivations Behind Presidential Films." Film and
               History League Conference, February 2005
          •  "Eating the Irish: Cannibalism in Ulysses." National James Joyce
               Conference, June 2003


James Knecht  Ph.D. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   representations of masculinity in film and television
          •   teen film and television (1990s-present)
          •   contemporary horror films
          •   Star Wars films and literature
          •   criticial theory, especially the works of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida,
               Roland Barthes, and Susan Jeffordsn
     Publications
          •   "It Really Isn't All Black and White: Color-Coding, Postfeminism and
               Charmed" in Investigating Charmed: The Magic Power of TV, by I.B.d
               Taurus, December 2007
          •   Introductions to the two issues on War (35.1 and 36.1) of Film & History,
               An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies (Spring and
               Fall 2006)
     Works in Progress
          •   "Three Kings, All Aces." Screen Heroism, Masculinity, and Some Tricks
               of the reality TV Trade," an article examining the interrelations of
               masculinity, history, and the Gulf War in the film Three Kings (1999)
     Conference Presentations
          •  "Editors Panel: Journal Editors." Panelist as Associate Editor, Film
              & History. Film & History League Biennial Conference, November 2006
          •  "Scream Knows What It’s Talking About: Referentiality as the New
              'New Masculinity.'" National Popular Culture Association/American Culture
               Association Conference, March 2005
          •  "Editors Panel – Special Event: 'What Do Editors Really Want? Or, How to
               Copy That.'" Panelist as Associate Editor, Film & History Southwest/TX               Popular and American Culture Associations Conference, February 2005
          •  "Scare Tactics: Generating Fear in Jeepers Creepers." National Popular
               Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference, April 2004


Scott Krzych  Ph.D. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   representations of the working class in film
          •   theorists Barbara Johnson, Stanley Fish, and Stuart Hall
          •   directors King Vidor, John Ford, and Brian De Palma
     Articles in Progress
          •  "Queer Celibacy: The Normalization of Lesbian Desire in Film and
              Television,” traces the application of Queer Theory to popular
              representations of lesbian lifestyle, and argues for a rethinking of such
              images along Lacanian and Marxist paradigms
          •  "Secular Salvation: The Shared Myths of Liberalism and Contemporary
              Christianity,” offers a post-structuralist theory of the relation between
              the discourses of fundamentalism and liberalism as manifest in
              Evangelical media (Trinity Broadcasting Network, the film Left Behind)
              and in secular representations/critiques of Christianity (Saved!)
     Conference Presentations
          •  "Straight Girl, Gay Girl. . .An Orgasm is an Orgasm: Undoing Gender in
              Kissing Jesica Stein." Popular Culture Association (South), October 2005
          •  "Ironic Resistance: Negative Space in Tess Slesinger’s 'Jobs in the Sky.'"
              American Literature Association Conference, May 2005


Brad Lewis  M.A. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   film noir
          •   punk culture
          •   classic horror cinema
          •   exploitation cinema
          •   American independent cinema
          •   directors Guy Maddin, Jack Hill, Anthony Mann, Wong Kar-Waii


Daniel Norford  M.A. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   Queer Theory, International Cinema, Horror Film
          •   Directors Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Frank Capra, David Cronenberg
          •   Theorists Joan Copjec, Carol J. Clover, Patricia White


Debbie Olson  Ph.D. Student
     Areas of Interest
          •   African-American cinema
          •   folklore and childrens films
          •   film noir and the psychological thriller
          •   African cinema
          •   directors Djibril Diop Mambety and Tim Burton
          •   theorists Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha
     Publications
          •   "Little Burton Blue: Tim Burton and the Product(ion) of Color in
               Fairy Tale Films." MP: An International Feminist Journal 1.6
               (2007): 32-40 (link)
     Articles in Progress
          •  "The Signifying Soldier: Black Aesthetics in Carlton Moss' The Negro
               Soldier (1944)"
          •  "Burton's Blue: The Product(ion) of Color in Tim Burton's Nightmare Before
               Christmas and The Corpse Bride"
     Conference Presentations
          •   "Faces of Fantasy: The Discourse of Exclusion in Hollywood’s Magical
               Realms"; Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association
               (MAP/ACA), Philadelphia, November 2007
          •   "Lu Jo bet bi (Wolof: what’s wrong with the eye/I?): Ousmane Sembène
               and Djibril Diop Mambèty: African Cinema Rhetoric and the Search
               for Authenticity"; Popular Cultures in Africa, University of Texas at
               Austin, March 2007
          •   "Little Burton Blue: Tim Burton and the Product(ion) of Color in Fairy
               Tale Films.” Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association
               (MAP/ACA), Baltimore, October 2006


David Schaap  M.A. Student


Kimberly Tolson  M.A. Student     
     Areas of Interest
          •   Cinematic Sound
          •   Japanese Musicals
          •   Movie Trailers
          •   Theorists Roland Barthes and Michel Chion
          •   Directors Joel and Ethan Coen
     Articles in Progress
          •  "Tease Me: The Postmodern Movie Trailer"
          •  "The Episodical: Wake Up, It's Not a Dream"
     Conference Presentations
          •  "Narrative Strategies of the Film Preview: Snakes on a Plane Trailers."
               National PCA/ACA Conference. Boston, Massachusetts, April 2007        
          •  "Celebrity Poker Showdown: The Obsession with the Un-American American Dream."
               Kansas State University Cultural Studies Conference, “Entertainment!"
               Manhattan, Kansas, March 2007        
          •  "Can You Hear Me Now?: The De-Acousmatization of Intercom Voices."
               Oklahoma Film and Video Studies Society Conference at the University
               of Central Oklahoma, November 2004