Katherine Fusco, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of English; Chair of English
Katherine Fusco
she/her/hers

Summary

Katherine Fusco holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. At the University of Nevada, Reno, she teaches U.S. film and literature and is Chair of the English Department. She has written three academic books and over a dozen articles, some of which have won the most prestigious awards in her field. She has also published in popular outlets, such as The Atlantic and Harper’s Bazaar. At present, Katherine is writing a biography about Anita Loos: screenwriter, author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and a woman you’d want to sit next to you at a dinner party. In 2025, she received an NEH grant in support of this project.

Research interests

  • Silent film
  • Classical Hollywood
  • Film theory
  • U.S. literature
  • U.S. modernist literature
  • Women's literature
  • Feminist theory

Publications

Books

  • Hollywood’s Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • With Nicole Seymour. Kelly Reichardt: Emergency and the Everyday. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.
  • Silent Film and U.S. Naturalist Literature: Time, Narrative, and Modernity. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Scholarly articles and essays

  • “Neither Typist nor Genius: Hollywood as Workplace in the John Emerson and Anita Loos How-to Guides.” Feminist Modernist Studies. 2023. 
  • “Girls Who Can’t Say No: Marilyn’s Playboy, Digital Resurrections, and the Matter of Posthumous Consent.” Accepted to Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of Unfinished Film, Eds. Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon. Oakland: University of California Press, 300-321.
  • With Lynda Olman, “Techniques of Justice: W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Visualizations and the Problem of Representing the Race.” MELUS 46.3 (2021): 1-29.
    Winner of the 1921 Prize in American Literature.
  • “Photoplay’s Fan Nation.” Circulating American Magazines. 22 June 2020.
  • “Feminist (Dis)Pleasure and Anita Loos’s Whisper Networks.” Feminist Modernist Studies 2.3 (October 2019): 340-347.
  • “Speculative Archives and Subjunctive Moods,” invited response to Modernism/Modernity’s special issue on Weak Theory, ed. Debra Rae Cohen, PrintPlus, Modernism/Modernity Vol 4. 1(10 March 2019).
  • “Placing Du Bois’s Ophelia: Multi-Scalar Black Modernity.” PrintPlus cluster on the Scale of the Literary Object, ed Rebecca Walkowitz, PrintPlus, Modernism/Modernity Vol 3.4 (1 February 2019).
  • “Sexing Farina: Racial Fantasies of Episodic Gender in the Hal Roach Our Gang Comedies.” PMLA Vol 133. 3 (May 2018): 526-541. Winner of the William Riley Parker Prize.
  • “‘Feast your eyes, glut your soul: Lon Chaney, Tod Browning, Disfigurement, and the Limits of Redemptive Affects.” Cinema Journal 57.4 (Summer 2018): 47-70.
  • "Better Travel through Brand Names: The Couture Grand Tour in Paris is a Woman’s Town and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 62.1 (Spring 2016): 1-24.
  • “Squashing the Bookworm: Manly Attention and Representations of Male Reading in Silent Film.” Modernism/Modernity 22.4 (November 2015): 627-650.
  • “Voices from Beyond the Grave: Virtual Tupac’s Live Performance at Coachella.” Camera Obscura 30.2 (2015): 29-53.
  • “The Actress Experience: Cruel Knowing and the Death of the Picture Personality in Black Swan and The Girlfriend Experience.” Camera Obscura 28.1 (2013): 1-35.
  • “Love and Citation in Midnight in Paris: Remembering Modernism, Remembering Woody.” The Blackwell Companion to Woody Allen. Eds. Peter Bailey and Sam Girgus. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013: 294-317.
  • “Taking Naturalism to the Moving Picture Show: Frank Norris’s Influence on D.W. Griffith’s Narrative Development from A Corner in Wheat to The Birth of a Nation.” Adaptation. 3.2 (September 2010): 132-154.
  • “Systems Not Men: Producing People in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland.” Studies in the Novel. 41.4 (Winter 2009): 418-434.
  • “Brute Time: Temporal Representation in Vandover and the Brute and the Actuality Film” Studies in American Naturalism. 4.1 (Summer 2009): 22-40.

Winner of the William Riley Parker Prize

  • “‘Feast your eyes, glut your soul: Lon Chaney, Tod Browning, Disfigurement, and the Limits of Redemptive Affects.” Cinema Journal 57.4 (Summer 2018): 47-70.
  • "Better Travel through Brand Names: The Couture Grand Tour in Paris is a Woman’s Town and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 62.1 (Spring 2016): 1-24.
  • “Squashing the Bookworm: Manly Attention and Representations of Male Reading in Silent Film.” Modernism/Modernity 22.4 (November 2015): 627-650.
  • “Voices from Beyond the Grave: Virtual Tupac’s Live Performance at Coachella.” Camera Obscura 30.2 (2015): 29-53.
  • “The Actress Experience: Cruel Knowing and the Death of the Picture Personality in Black Swan and The Girlfriend Experience.” Camera Obscura 28.1 (2013): 1-35.
  • “Love and Citation in Midnight in Paris: Remembering Modernism, Remembering Woody.” The Blackwell Companion to Woody Allen. Eds. Peter Bailey and Sam Girgus. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013: 294-317.
  • “Taking Naturalism to the Moving Picture Show: Frank Norris’s Influence on D.W. Griffith’s Narrative Development from A Corner in Wheat to The Birth of a Nation.” Adaptation. 3.2 (September 2010): 132-154.
  • “Systems Not Men: Producing People in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland.” Studies in the Novel. 41.4 (Winter 2009): 418-434.
  • “Brute Time: Temporal Representation in Vandover and the Brute and the Actuality Film” Studies in American Naturalism. 4.1 (Summer 2009): 22-40.

Education

  • Ph.D., English, Vanderbilt University, 2008
  • B.A., The State University of New York at Geneseo, 2003