Interests

History and theory of film in relation to art, classical and contemporary Hollywood cinema, European "art" film, surrealism, psychoanalytic and feminist theory.

Biography

Susan Felleman, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies is the author of two books, Botticelli in Hollywood: The Films of Albert Lewin (Twayne 1997) and Art in the Cinematic Imagination (Texas 2006), as well as numerous other publications. She is currently at work on a book project, Real Objects in Unreal Situations: Modern Art in Fiction Films, a series of case studies, ranging from the use American academic sculpture in The Song of Songs (Paramount Pictures 1933), “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”) in Venus vor Gericht (a 1941 National Socialist entertainment), abstract painting in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955), to 19th century Neoclassical sculpture in the recent British adaptation of Pride & Prejudice (2005). The book—for which Professor Felleman received a 2010 William A. Minor Grant—will not only look closely at the way that art is engaged in these and other fiction films and how cinematic and narrative reframing alters the experience of art objects, but also investigate the material, economic, social and political currents through which the art comes to appear on screen.

Last year Professor Felleman was the keynote speaker at a symposium about film studies and art history, “Image and Movement,” held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, which brought together leading scholars from both fields. This Fall, Professor Felleman will travel to Belgium where she will lecture, and confer with Steven Jacobs, her co-investigator on a University College Ghent grant project, “Cinematic Visualizations of Visual Arts.” “A Little Infidelity: La femme infidèle becomes Unfaithful,” her speculative essay on cinephilia, memory and intextuality, will appear in Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Film, Pleasure, and Digital Culture, Volume II, edited by Scott Balcerzak and Jason Sperb, due out soon from Wallflower Press; and “A Two Way Mirror: Francis Bacon and the Deformation of Film,” will appear in A Museum without Walls? Film, Art, New Media, edited by Angela Dalle Vacche, forthcoming next year from Palgrave-Macmillan.

In the 2010-2011 academic year, Felleman is teaching a new course, Understanding Visual Media, to undergraduate cinema and photography students, as well as a History of Experimental Cinema and a graduate course on the History of Media Art and Culture. Among other service activities, Professor Felleman represents the Department of Cinema and Photography to the SIUC Fine Arts Activity Fee committee and is actively involved in organizing fine arts activities, including a new occasional Friday afternoon screening series to be held at Carbondale’s Varsity Center for the Arts.

Courses

• CP 463 Spring 09 - History of Experimental Film
• CP360 Fall 07 - Film Analysis
• CP368 Spring 09 - Film Theory
• CP470A WMST491 - Feminism and Film
• MCMA 551 Fall 07 - History of Media Arts & Culture