Katherine Fusco
Assistant Professor Department of English Ph.D., English, Vanderbilt University Dr. Fusco teaches 19th and 20th century American literature. Her research explores the way social changes register as artistic innovations in a variety of media forms—not only literature but also visual culture. Professor Fusco's dissertation, now a book manuscript, argues that in the era between the U.S. adoptions of standard time (1883) and daylight savings time (1918), the naturalist novels of Theodore Dreiser, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jack London, and Frank Norris competed for public attention alongside increasingly popular silent film entertainments. Her research establishes the dynamic relationship between the developing cinema and naturalist literature in terms of turn-of-the-century time management techniques. Dr. Fusco's new writing about contemporary cinema includes an essay about modernist reputations and canon formation in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and an article about celebrity and cruelty that focuses on Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience. She is currently at work on a co-authored book about the contemporary film director Kelly Reichardt. |