stevenalancarr.pbworks.com

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Complicated Dictator: The Untold Story of the Concentration Camp Scenes from Chaplin's 1940 Hollywood Anti-Fascist Comedy That Audiences Never Saw

 

Project Abstract

Charles Chaplin's anti-fascist comedy The Great Dictator (UA, 1940) is the Hollywood film that comes to mind when discussing the film industry's treatment before World War II of Nazism and the Holocaust, and the film that many believe they know. Recent archival research, however, has brought to light extensive scenes from the film that were to be set in a concentration camp. Three very brief scenes set in a prison camp from the actual film are all that remain. Given the discrepancy between the amount of script material devoted to the concentration camp and the duration of these scenes in the release print, The Great Dictator now warrants reconsideration as an early and influential barometer of Hollywood's treatment of Nazism and the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust. This paper considers how both the film and new information that has emerged concerning its production context presaged many of the thorny problems Hollywood films would face in how to depict Nazi anti-Semitism for years to come.

 

Proposal Narrative

Charles Chaplin's anti-fascist comedy The Great Dictator (UA, 1940) is the Hollywood film that comes to mind when discussing the film industry's treatment before World War II of Nazism and the Holocaust, and the anti-Nazi film that many believe they know well.  Recent archival research conducted this summer at the Charlie Chaplin Archive in the Cineteca di Bologna Library in Italy, however, has revealed extensive scenes from the film that were to take place in a concentration camp.  Three very brief scenes set in a prison camp from the actual film are all that remain.  Given the discrepancy between the amount of script material devoted to the concentration camp and the duration of these scenes in the release print, discovery of these scenes in previous drafts of the script casts an entirely new light on the The Great Dictator, warranting its reconsideration as an early and influential barometer of Hollywood's treatment of Nazism and the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust.  This project seeks to define how new information coming to light concerning its production history has opened uncharted avenues to understanding many of the thorny problems involving politics and taste that Hollywood films would face in how to depict Nazi anti-Semitism for years to come.  To accomplish this, the project proposes to continue work already begun this summer.  This work involves thoroughly cataloguing all of the scenes from the script that were set in a concentration camp across multiple drafts produced throughout the late 1930s; cross-referencing this material with the film's publicity; and finally comparing this evidence against corporate records held by the film's distributor, United Artists.

 

Although released nearly 75 years ago, The Great Dictator still has relevance to today.  In 2011, Peop1e.org used social media and YouTube to released the video "United We Rise" in the midst of the Arab Spring.  The video mashed up images of protests throughout the Arab world with the final speech Chaplin gave at the end of The Great Dictator.  Edited from these sources and set to a soulful electric guitar solo, the mashup brilliantly demonstrated the power of the film's underlying message to speak meaningfully across time and space, even nearly 75 years later, to present-day audiences and to a very different political context.

 

In addition to its relevance today, though, the film retains significance as the archetypal Hollywood anti-Nazi film.  As Christian Delage has observed, the film waged a "war against Hitler via the silver screen," showing Chaplin's "personal commitment" to "the democratic ideal of peace," and at great personal and professional risks and costs (7).  Yet as both an anti-Nazi film as well as a Chaplin film, The Great Dictator is as atypical an example as it is an archetypal one.  As a Hollywood anti-Nazi film, it is complicated in that Chaplin held a greater degree of freedom than those working at other studios in being able to produce the film through his own production company with his own money, and then release it through United Artists, one of the so-called Little Three studios in which Chaplin also owned a financial interest.  In other words, the relative creative freedom Chaplin enjoyed in making this film was atypical of other anti-Nazi films produced by major Hollywood studios during this period.  Similarly, despite earning approximately $5 million in box office, thus making it the highest grossing Chaplin film upon initial release, the film atypically broke with the conventions of other Chaplin films, not only having him play another role besides the tramp, but also having Chaplin speak for the first time using synchronous sound.

 

Laden with contradictions involving its production, the film's various drafts of the script assume even greater significance.  As Stuart Liebman has noted, the challenge to "the historiography of Holocaust cinema" has shifted from one of availability of the films themselves to finding the "various kinds of documentation that could help explain the genesis of such works, the vicissitudes of their production, and the nature of their marketing and reception" (197).  With thousands of pages detailing multiple aspects of the film's production, including numerous scenes set in the concentration camp as well as daily production reports, the possibility exists to overcome the challenge Liebman has identified.  The project proposes a three-pronged approach to understand the film's significance from multiple perspectives.  The first involves work already begun, reviewing drafts of scripts at the Charlie Chaplin Archive to trace the development of scenes set in the concentration camp.  The second involves accessing the film's press books maintained by publicist Russell Birdwell, owned by the Roy Export Company Establishment, and housed at the Archives de Montreux, Clarens, Switzerland.  The third approach involves researching the extensive United Artists Corporation collection at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Film and Theater Research.  By pursuing these three categories of primary historical documentation, one can indeed gain a fairly complete picture of the genesis of this film, from Chaplin's early conception of it up through how its publicity guided audiences in making meaning of the film.

 

This research project, then, seeks to use vital primary historical materials to develop a composite picture tracing how The Great Dictator formed its depictions of Nazism and the early phases of the Holocaust over time.  Many books and articles have treated The Great Dictator as emblematic of Hollywood's response to these historical developments, but relatively little is understood of how the film developed over time, and how audiences made sense of the film, both in and amid a particular historical moment.  As David Welky has noted, little of the scholarship on Hollywood and its response to Nazism and fascism "adequately merges the picture industry's... onscreen side and its corporate side into a complete narrative of the war-related issues that divided Hollywood during these tumultuous years" (3).  Certainly, the discussion of the film in my 2001 Hollywood and Anti-Semitism could have benefited from a more "complete narrative" of the film, particularly regarding how the film was "steeped in controversy" during the 1941 U.S. Senate Propaganda Hearings (253-54).  While Welky's discussion of The Great Dictator offered a more complete narrative of the film, neither he, Charles Maland, nor Chaplin's biographer David Robinson have referenced the full extent to which the concentration camp figured prominently during the script-writing phase of production.

 

In this regard, the way in which the depiction of the concentration camp evolved through the making of the film offers rare insight into the changing role comedy played throughout the making of the film.  As Robinson noted, this comedy belied a serious dimension that there "was nothing light-hearted in Chaplin's deeper intentions in making the film" (485).  A treatment dated 29 Oct. 1938 entitled "Concentration Camp" extensively detailed "both conscious and unconscious sabotage" taking place in the camp through slapstick routines.  By the summer of 1939, Chaplin had elaborated on these gags to include a pie to the face of a German officer, and another scene showing an officer stepping into a boot filled with beer.  While such details, taken out of context, might appear trivial today, their prominence in the script, and the changes that were made to these scenes charted an evolving response to the growing awareness of Nazism.  These early drafts and their alterations today offer important insight into the use of slapstick comedy then as a political strategy to counter fascism.  These drafts of course also point to the limited frame of reference slapstick could offer to the actual horrors of the camps.

 

A deeper understanding of The Great Dictator and the role that it played as part of a larger body of Hollywood anti-Nazi films remains vital to my larger project continuing the work begun in Hollywood and Anti-Semitism.  Ultimately, research on The Great Dictator will result in a pivotal chapter for this larger project, using production and reception histories of the film show how, as a Hollywood anti-Nazi film, Chaplin's work could function both archetypally as well as atypically.  The larger project itself attempts to understand the response of the American film industry between 1933 and 1945 to emerging revelations concerning Nazi anti-Semitism and its resulting atrocities.  For this larger project, I argue that films such as The Great Dictator helped shape what audiences later came to understand as the Holocaust film.  As Welky has observed, only a more "complete narrative" of this film and others like it during this period will yield the true complexity of how popular culture helped mould audience expectations for this kind of film, amid a complex and at times contradictory set of industrial, cultural, and global constraints.

 

In anticipation of continuing work on this project, I have applied for external funding from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy Film Scholars Program.  The grant awards $25,000 to two film scholars each year.  Among the 60-70 applications received each year, however, the grant remains extremely competitive.  I have applied for this award as of 1 October, and if the grant is successful, it will help bring to completion a project on which I have been working since 2001.  If not, the IPFW grant still will have a meaningful impact on completing this chapter for The Great Dictator, since it would help to substantially defray some of the travel and lodging costs associated with traveling to Bologna, Italy; Montreux, Switzerland; and/or Madison, Wisconsin.

 

Finishing this chapter will be a milestone in the overall project, which in turn will become the centerpiece for my upcoming case for promotion to Full Professor on the basis of excellence in research.  Since my last case for tenure and promotion, I have published a journal article, six book chapters, a paper as part of a conference proceeding, and various other examples of scholarship.  However, the bulk of my research since 2001 has focused on producing a book-length manuscript.  Following my earlier Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II (Cambridge U P, 2001), this second book will further exploring the role that accusations of alleged Jewish control over Hollywood played in public perceptions of the film industry.  The chapter on The Great Dictator specifically addresses how films of this period depicted both Nazi anti-Semitism as well as the atrocities that came to constitute the Holocaust.  Indeed, the film is important precisely because it depicted these things within a set of constraints that included widespread public belief that Jews controlled Hollywood.  The chapter thus augments other chapters already written on public perceptions of cinematic treatment of Nazism and the Holocaust, including the role of the European art film in shaping American audience expectations for these films; and the role of the Hollywood social problem film in addressing anti-Semitism immediately after World War II.  A chapter addressing depictions of the concentration camp in The Great Dictator through primary historical documentation thus will be an essential component of this book-length project.

 

 

References Cited

Carr, Steven Alan.  Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II.  Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication.  Cambridge UK: Cambridge U P, 2001.

 

Delage, Christian.  Chaplin Facing History.  Charles Penwarden, trans.  Histoire Figurée.  Paris FR: Jean-Michel Place, 2005.

 

Liebman, Stuart.  "Historiography/Holocaust Cinema: Challenges and Advances."  Cinema and the Shoah: An Art Confronts the Tragedy of the Twentieth Century.  Jean-Michel Frodon, ed.  Anna Harrison and Tom Mes, trans.  2007; Albany NY: State U of New York P, 2010.

 

Maland, Charles J.  Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image.  Princeton NJ: Princeton U P, 1991.

 

Robinson, David.  Chaplin: His Life and Art.  New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 1985.

 

Welky, David.  The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II.  Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2008.

 

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Curriculum Vita

GENERAL INFORMATION

 

Present Rank and Affiliation

Associate Professor of Communication with Tenure and Graduate Program Director, Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne.

 

Educational Experience

1987 - 1994	The University of Texas at Austin. Ph.D. in Radio, Television and Film. Dissertation: "The Hollywood Question: America and the Belief in Jewish Control over the Motion Picture Industry before 1941."
1986 - 1987	Northwestern University. M.A. in Radio, Television and Film.
1982 - 1986	The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A.B. with Honors in Radio, Television and Motion Pictures. Undergraduate Honors Thesis: "Hester Street: Ethnicity, Feminism, and the Independent Film."

 

Academic Appointments

 

Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne
2009 - present	Co-Director, Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Successfully proposed an IPFW Center for Excellence to promote the study of the Holocaust and Genocide in Northeast Indiana. The Center oversees a $30,000 annual budget and a three (3) year commitment for funding.
2004 - 2006	Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) Fellow Represented the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs in multiple technology initiatives, such as supervising the overhaul of numerous campus and school-level websites (including the OAA website), disbursement of grant moneys for technology innovation, and the development of a campus audio portal.
1994 - 2000	Assistant Professor of Communication, Tenure Track Taught classes in Media and Public Communication Track, including media history, media aesthetics and new technology.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
2002 - 2003	Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow Held in residence in Washington DC; conducted archival research and gave numerous presentations for general as well as scholarly audiences.
Northwestern University
July 2002	Faculty, Seventh Annual Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization Taught a four-class unit on Holocaust film to 25-30 Fellows, selected from competitive applications of current and prospective college faculty, who teach courses on the Holocaust.
Sam Houston State University
1994	Lecturer, Division of Public Communication, Temporary Non-Tenure Track Taught classes in video production, scriptwriting and mass media.

 

Licenses, Registrations, and/or Certifications

2002	Indiana University Graduate School Certification
1994	Purdue University Graduate School Certification

 

Awards and Honors

2010	Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives Loewenstein-Wiener Fellowship in residence for May 2011.
2002	National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend to supplement U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship.
2000	Induction into Indiana University Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching to recognize teaching excellence at the statewide level.
1999	Stephen H. Coltrin Award for Communication Excellence, presented by the International Radio and Television Society Foundation for winning a team Case Study Competition on children and television, $2500 (shared among team members).
1995	Best Debut Paper Award, Theatre Division, Speech Communication Association, "A Peculiar Jewish Monopoly: Life and the Accusation of Jewish Control over the Theater."

 

RESEARCH AND CREATIVE ENDEAVOR

 

Publications and Productions Related to Research and Creative Endeavor

 

Book

Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II. New York: Cambridge U P, 2001.

Reviewed in Journal of Jewish History 56.1 (2005): 170-72; Archiv f√ºr Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 240.155 (2003): 431; The Chronicle of Higher Education 1 Oct. 2004; The London Review of Books 7 Mar 2002; The New Republic 21 May 2001.

 

Book chapter

"Jew and Not-Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Postwar Hollywood Social Problem Film."  The Wandering View: Modern Jewish Experiences in World Cinema.  Lawrence Baron, ed.  Waltham MA: Brandeis U P, forthcoming.

 

"Staying for Time: The Holocaust and Atrocity Footage in American Public Memory." Violating Time: History, Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema. Christina Lee, ed. New York NY: Continuum, 2008 (proof pdf)

 

"How Some Things Never Change: Britney, the Joy of Pepsi, and the Familial Gaze." A Family Affair: Cinema Comes Home. Murray Pomerance, ed. London UK: Wallflower P, 2008.

 

"Wretched Refuse: Watching New York Slum Films in the Aftermath of 9/11."  The City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination.  Murray Pomerance, ed.  New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers U P, 2007.  Rev. of "From Street Scene to Dead End." 229-42.

 

"Mass Murder, Modernity, and the Alienated Gaze."  Cinema and Modernity.  Murray Pomerance, ed.  New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers U P, 2006. 57-73.

 

"L.I.E., The Believer, and the Sexuality of Jewish Boys." Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth. Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance, eds. Contemporary Film and Television Series. Detroit MI: Wayne State U P, 2005. 316-32.

Drawing on Jewish cultural images of boyhood, Steven Alan Carr's "L.I.E., The Believer, and the Sexuality of the Jewish Boy," deals primarily with Michael Cuesta's LIE. (2001) and Henry Bean's The Believer (2001). Carr links the sexual representation of the body of the Jewish boy to a long-standing sense of ambiguity beginning with the Biblical tale of Isaac and Abraham, a state of bodily dis/ease which has been perpetuated by the dominant cinema. Carr's critique of these films offers us the possibility of reading culture-specific representations of sexualized boyhood in ways which might complicate not only our thinking about sexuality and boyhood, but also how these specific moments vary with degrees of cultural, social, and racial difference. Carr's argument ultimately calls for a direct treatment of the sexualization of the Jewish boy, bringing it out of the realm of speculation and guesswork, into a more readable and discursive environment instead of allowing it to remain "unseen, unexamined, and unconfronted" (332).

....this is a superb collection of essays dealing with a series of character tropes and resultant identity politics that has too often been ignored. Pomerance and Gateward have assembled an interesting cross-section of theorists to examine the issue of cinematic boyhood and its attendant anxieties, and as a one-of-a-kind volume, this belongs in every serious collection of cinema studies. Tellingly illustrated and meticulously indexed, this volume will set the standard in the field for some time to come, and is thus highly recommended to the general reader, as well as the specialist.

Josh Call, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

 

"From 'Fucking Cops!' to 'Fucking Media!': Bonnie and Clyde (1967) for a Sixties America." Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. Lester D. Friedman, ed. Cambridge U P Film Handbooks Series. New York: Cambridge U P, 2000.

 

Article in a scholarly journal

 

"The Holocaust in the Text: Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and the Allegorical Film Adaptation." Film Criticism 27.1 (2002): 50-65.

 

"On the Edge of Tastelessness: The Smothers Brothers, CBS and the Struggle for Control." Cinema Journal 31.4 (1992): 3-24.

 

Paper published in conference proceedings

 

"Hollywood, the Holocaust, and World War II." American Judaism in Popular Culture. Studies in Jewish Civilization 17. Leonard J. Greenspoon and Ronald A. Simkins, eds. Proc. of the 17th Annual Symposium of the Klutznick Chair in Jewish Civilization-Harris Center for Judaic Studies, Creighton U, Omaha NE; U of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE, 24-25 Oct. 2004. Omaha NE: Creighton U P; Lincoln NE: U of Nebraska P, 2006. 39-58.

 

"From Street Scene to Dead End: Hollywood and the Urban Ethnic Im[m]igrant, 1931-1937."  La M√©moire des villes / The Memory of Cities.  Proc. of La Mémoire des Villes / The Memory of Cities, University of Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France, 2 May 2002.  Yves Clavaron and Bernard Dieterle, eds.  Saint-Etienne, France: Publications de l'Universit√© de Saint-Etienne, 2003.

 

Published reviews of scholarly or creative work

Review of Art, Culture, and Media Under the Third Reich. Edited by Richard A. Etlin. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press, 2002. Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 33.4 (2004): 487-93.

 

Other

"2000 Presidential Election Coverage." The Encyclopedia of Television.  2^nd ed.  Horace Newcomb, ed.  New York NY: Routledge, 2004.

 

"Luise Rainer." Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, eds. New York: Routledge, 1997.  Revised for republication in Encyclopedia of Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia.  Paula E. Hyman and Dalia Ofer, ed.  Jerusalem, Israel: Shalvi, in press.

 

Unpublished Work Related to Research and Creative Endeavor

 

Lecture or Paper at Professional Meeting

1. "Writing on the Wall: Requiem for (a Radical) Media?" Issues in Contemporary Media Theory. Society for Cinema Studies (SCS) Conference. Los Angeles, 24 May 1991.

2. "Coon or Cohen? Animation and the Transmutable Ethnic Stereotype." Icon and Stereotype. Society for Animation Studies Conference. Rochester, 3 Oct. 1991.

3. "Success or Conspiracy: The Durable Myth of the Hollywood Movie Mogul." Film Techniques and Texts. Textual Technologies. College Station, 29 Mar. 1992

3a. Revision of 3. Ethnic Portrayal in American Films and American History. Society for Cinema Studies Conference. Pittsburgh, 3 May 1992.

3b. Revision and expansion of 3a. "The Hollywood Question." Finding Aids to History: Popular Culture as a Lens on the Past. International Communication Association. Montreal, May 1997.

3c. Revision and expansion of 3b. "The Hollywood Question: American Film Historiography and the Jewish 'Problem.'" Cinema and Diverse Ethnicities. Society for Cinema Studies. Washington DC, 24 May 2001.

4. "Hollywood, the Holocaust and the Biblical Epic." Imagining the Unimaginable: Rethinking Holocaust Imagery. Society for Cinema Studies. New Orleans, 12 Feb. 1993.

5. "Hollywood, Isolationism and the Jews." Jewish Art, Drama and Film. Popular Culture Association-American Culture Association. New Orleans, 8 April 1993.

6. "The Hollywood Movie Mogul and the American Jewish Question." Competitive Paper, Historical Studies in Popular Communication. International Communication Association. Albuquerque, 27 May 1995.

7. "A Peculiar Jewish Monopoly: Life Magazine and the Accusation of Jewish Control over the American Theatre." New Voices in Theatre II: Dialectical, Rhetorical, and Social Perspectives. Speech Communication Association. San Antonio, 19 Nov. 1995.

8. "Virtual Paranoia in the '90s." Society for Cinema Studies. Dallas, March 1996.

9. "Contemporary Discourse on Bonnie and Clyde." Bonnie and Clyde: A Thirtieth Celebration. Society for Cinema Studies. Ottawa, May 1997.

10. With John Parrish-Sprowl. "Tobacco Denial and the Discursive Body." Evidence in Popular Culture. Border Subjects II: Bodies of Evidence. Normal IL, 3 Oct. 1997.

11. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Jew? Disney's "The Three Little Pigs" and Depression-Era America." Drawing from the Past: Animated Films' Regressive Visions. National Communication Association. Chicago, 22 Nov. 1997.

12. "Reading Goodbye, My Fancy (1951) as Holocaust Melodrama." 23rd Annual International Conference on Film and Literature. Tallahassee, 30 Jan. 1998.

13. "Have You Witnessed a Holocaust Lately? NBC, Ford and the Network Premiere of Schindler's List." Revisiting Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List ?? Five Years Later. International Communication Association. Renaissance Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 21 Jul 1998.

14. "Lewinsky's Mouth." International Association of Mass Communication Research. Strathclyde U, Glasgow. 28 Jul. 1998.

15. "'If You Don't Talk to Your Kids About Sex, We Will': Indiana and the Secularization of Abstinence-Only Education." International Association of Mass Communication Research. Leipzig, Jul. 1999.

16. "Reconstructing Wildman Woody: Reconfiguring Identity, Ethnicity and the Incest Taboo." New Critical Perspectives on Woody Allen. University Film and Video Association. Boston, 4 Aug. 1999.

17. "The Holocaust in the Text: Film Adaptations of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables in the 1990s." French Cinema at the Millennium. 25th Annual Conference on Literature and Film. Tallahassee, 28 Jan. 2000.

18. "Holocausts of the Hyperreal: Life Is Beautiful in Postmodern America." Should Life Be So Beautiful? A Crisis in Representing the Holocaust. Society for Cinema Studies Conference. Chicago, 9 Mar. 2000.

19. "There's No Place Like Oz: HBO and 'Quality Television.'" "We're Not in Kansas Anymore": HBO's Oz and the Changing Landscape for Dramatic Television Series. International Communication Association. Acapulco, 4 June 2000.

20. "Ethnicity, Humor, and the Jewish Movie Mogul in Hollywood." Ethnic and Racial Humor. Modern Language Association. New Orleans Sheraton, New Orleans LA, 29 Dec. 2001.

21. "Political Correctness and Literal Correctness." Understanding Globalization. Educating for the Global Community, Area Dean's Conference, IU - Purdue Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne IN, 22 Feb. 2002.

22. "From Street Scene to Dead End: Hollywood and the Urban Ethnic Immigrant, 1931 - 1937." La Mémoire des Villes / Memory of the Cities. University of Jean Monnet, St. Etienne, France, 2 May 2002.

22a. Revision and expansion of 22. Perspectives on Globalization. Society for Cinema Studies. Westin Tabor Center, Denver CO, 24 May 2002.

23. "Get Real: Confronting Lord of the Rings as Allegory." The Fantastic. Literature/Film Association Annual Conference: Global and American Cinemas. Dickinson College, Carlisle PA, 19 Oct. 2002.

24. "American Holocaust: The Banality of 9/11 After the Enactment of the USA Patriot Act." Legal Communication in Action Since 9/11/01. National Communication Association. New Orleans Marriott, New Orleans LA, 22 Nov. 2002.

25. "Oops! We Did It Again: Performance, Family Values, and the Familial Gaze." A Family Affair. Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Hilton Minneapolis, Minneapolis MN, 6 Mar 2003.

26. " 'A Clear and Present Danger of Substantive Evil to the Community': Film Censorship, Max Ophuls' La Ronde (1950), and Commercial Pictures Corporation v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York (1954)." Project, Production, and Distribution Histories. Max Ophuls Beyond Borders. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg VA, 29 Mar. 2003.

27. "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System." Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Fellows Presentation. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 7 May 2003.

28. "Postwar Representations of Anne Frank in Film and Television," Anne Frank in Film and Literature, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 5 June 2003.

28a. Revision and expansion of 28.  Cinema Center, Fort Wayne IN, 18 Apr. 2004.

29. "Transparency of Evidence: Viewing Catastrophic Testimony." Interpreting Testimony Summer Research Workshop. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 15 Aug. 2003.

30. "New Approaches to Studying Holocaust Film." National Communication Association Convention. Miami Beach FL, 20 Nov. 2003.

31. "Hollywood and the Holocaust." Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Otherness: The Construction of Race. Webster U, St. Louis MO, 5 Dec. 2003.

32. "Anti-Semitism, World War II, and the Hollywood Social Problem Film."  The American Jewish Experience Through Film: Part I.  The American Jewish Experience as Reflected in Film: A National Symposium.  Queens College, The City University of New York, Flushing NY, 16 May 2004.

33. "Hollywood, the Holocaust, and World War II."  350 Years of American Judaism in Popular Culture.  The 17th Annual Klutznick Harris Symposium.  Creighton U, Omaha NE, 24 Oct. 2004.

34. "Eichmann TV." Encoded Trauma: Crisis, Popular Media, and Audience Meaning Making. Reception Studies Society 2009 Conference. Purdue U, W. Lafayette IN, 12 Sep. 2009.

35. Movies, Jews, and Profits to Lose: Hollywood and the European Market Before World War II - Paper delivered for Hollywood History / Jewish History: The Past and Future of a Popular Jewish Identity, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles CA, 20 Mar 2010.

36. Can the Holocaust Be a Television Sitcom? "Wowschwitz," Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Show, and How Taste Still Matters - Position Paper for The Sitcoms Have Become Self Aware, Flow Conference 2010, Austin TX, 1 Oct. 2010.

37. "To Encompass the Unseeable": The Last Stage (Times Film, 1949) and Auschwitz in the Mind of Cold War America.  Reimagining Jewish History in the Cold War.  Cold War Cultures: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.  U of Texas at Austin, Austin TX.  1 Oct. 2010.

38. Anti-Semitism and the Postwar Hollywood Social Problem Film - Paper Proposal for the 2011 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, New Orleans LA, 13 Mar 2011 (pdf).

39. "Hollywood, Foreign Films, and the Birth of the Holocaust Film" - National Cinemas, Global Meanings.  9th Annual Cultural Studies Association Conference, Chicago IL, 26 Mar 2011 (accepted; pdf).

40. "Hollywood, Nazism, and Globalization: Popular Culture and the Birth of the Holocaust Film, 1933-1945."  The American Jewish Archives Loewenstein-Wiener Research Fellowship Seminar.  Cincinnati OH, 16 May 2011.

41. "Eichmann TV and the Globalization of Holocaust Memory."  The Eichmann Trial as Media Event.  The Eichmann Trial in International Perspective: Impact, Developments, and Challenges.  Berlin, Germany, 26 May 2011.

42. "Just a Sad Love Story": Three Comrades (MGM, 1938) and the 1930s Hollywood Anti-Nazi Film - Paper Proposal for the 11th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, Lyon, France, 6 July 2011.

43. "The Aggregate Dictator: Arab Uprisings, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (UA, 1940), and Peop1e.org's 'United We Rise' Mash-Up Video."  Global Voices in the 21st Century: Social Media and Change in Latin America and the Middle East.  Global Fusion Conference, Philadelphia PA, 14-16 Oct 2011.

 

Other

Response to Deidre Butler, “Witness at the Blackboard: Reflections on the Phenomenon of Survivor Testimony in Canadian Schools” and Rosemary Horowitz, “Methodological Considerations for Using the Videotaped Testimony of Holocaust Survivors in the Classroom,” Teaching the Visual Image, Bearing Witness: Memory, Representation, and Pedagogy in the Post-Holocaust Age, Shenandoah U, Winchester VA, 13 Apr. 2010.

Featured U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Speaker, "Hollywood and the Holocaust: Real Reactions from the Film Industry," Denver U, Denver CO, 19 June 2007.

Invited U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Jack and Goldie Wolfe Miller Lecture, "Mediated Evil: Re-Enacting the Holocaust for a Global Audience," Norfolk State U, Norfolk, VA, 4 Apr. 2007.

Invited Public Lecture and Featured Panelist, "The Holocaust in Hollywood Film, the American Press, and Traumatic Memory."  Emory University, Atlanta GA, 27 Jan 2005.

Esther and George Kessler Lecture on Jewish Film and Media, "Hollywood, the Holocaust, and the Crisis over Propaganda," Michigan State U, East Lansing MI, 11 Nov. 2004.

Invited Public Lecture, "Hollywood, Anti-Semitism, and the Return of the Passion Film." Purdue University Jewish Studies Public Lecture. West Lafayette, IN, 12 Feb. 2004.

Invited Guest Lecture, "The Holocaust and the Documentary Tradition," Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter MN, 27 Oct. 2003.

Invited Guest Lecture, "Cinematic Representations of the Holocaust," Eastern Michigan U, Ypsilanti MI, 24 Oct. 2003.

Invited Keynote Lecture, "Hollywood and Anti-Semitism." Eastern Michigan University Lecture Series. Ypsilanti MI, 23 Oct. 2003.

Invited Keynote Lecture, "Hollywood and the Holocaust," Summer Holocaust Institute for Florida Teachers, University of Florida, Gainesville FL, 10 July 2003.

Invited Keynote Lecture, "The Holocaust and the Alienated Gaze in Postwar American Film," The Psychology of Hatred: The 9^th Annual Holocaust Commemoration, Weber State U, Ogden UT, 14 Apr. 2003.

Invited Guest Lecture, "Hollywood and Anti-Semitism," U of North Texas, Denton TX, 9 Nov. 2001.

Panelist for Meet the New Right: "Compassionate Conservatism," Free Market, and State Policy, the inaugural panel of the 2001-02 American Studies Lecture Series at Indiana U - Bloomington, Bloomington IN, 29 Nov. 2001.

Instituted, organized and coordinated conference on the Holocaust at the University of Texas at Austin with John D. H. Downing, Austin, 29 April 1993.

"Free Speech." Issues on Campus. Carrying It On: A New Jewish Agenda National Conference Organizing Against Anti-Semitism and Racism. Philadelphia, 9 Nov. 1991.

 

Grant Acquisition and Current Grant Proposals

2002	National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System, $5,000.00 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for the Advancement of Holocaust Studies Fellowship for "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System, $27,000.00 Purdue Research Foundation International Travel Grant for $485.00 to present "From Street Scene to Dead End: Hollywood and the Urban Ethnic Immigrant, 1931 - 1937" at the University of Jean Monnet, Saint Etienne, France. IU - Purdue Fort Wayne International Conference Fund grant for $400.00 to present "From Street Scene to Dead End: Hollywood and the Urban Ethnic Immigrant, 1931 - 1937" at the University of Jean Monnet, Saint Etienne, France.
2001	IU - Purdue Fort Wayne Research Support Fund grant for $400.00 for archival research on "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System."
1998	Indiana University Overseas Conference Fund Award, $400.00 to present "Lewinsky's Mouth" at the International Association of Mass Communication Research Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Purdue Research Foundation International Travel Grant, $1,280.00 to present "Have You Witnessed a Holocaust Lately? NBC, Ford and the Network Premiere of Schindler's List" at the International Communication Association in Jerusalem, Israel. Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne Summer Research Grant, $5,000.00 to complete "Have You Witnessed a Holocaust Lately? NBC, Ford and the Network Premiere of Schindler's List."
1997	Purdue Research Foundation Faculty Summer Grant, $5,000.00 to complete "From 'Fucking Cops!' to 'Fucking Media!': Bonnie and Clyde (1967) for a Sixties America."
1996	Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne Summer Research Grant, $4,000.00 to complete archival work for Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History, 1880-1941.

 

Institutes, Workshops, Conferences, Expositions, and Other Programs Attended

Participant, Interpreting Testimony Summer Research Workshop, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, 4 Aug - 15 Aug 2003.

Chair. Perspectives on Globalization. Society for Cinema Studies. Westin Tabor Center, Denver CO, 24 May 2002.

Respondent. Popular Film and Beyond. International Communication Association. Washington Hilton, Washington DC. 24 May 2001.

Co-chair (with Walter Metz). Should Life Be So Beautiful? A Crisis in Representing the Holocaust. Society for Cinema Studies Conference. Chicago, 9 Mar. 2000.

Chair. Studies in Cinema Panel. International Communication Association. San Francisco Hilton, San Francisco. 31 May 1999.

Chair. Sites of Trauma in Public Memory Panel. Society for Cinema Studies. Hyatt, San Diego, 5 April 1998.

Respondent. Resolving Identity Through Memory Panel. International Communication Association. Renaissance Jerusalem, Jerusalem. 22 July 1998.

Respondent. Studies in Film Panel. International Communication Association Conference. Sheraton Chicago, Chicago. 25 May 1996.

Respondent. Listening to the Audience Panel. Speech Communication Association Conference. San Antonio. 18 Nov. 1995.

Chair. Jewish Art, Drama and Film. Popular Culture Association-American Culture Association. New Orleans, 8 April 1993.

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Previously Received Support Related to this Project

2010	Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives Loewenstein-Wiener Fellowship in residence for May 2011, $1,500.00 (external)
2007	IPFW Sabbatical Leave for "Documenting Atrocity: Hollywood, the Holocaust, and the Roosevelt Administration, 1941-1945," (internal)
2002	National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System, $5,000.00 (external) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for the Advancement of Holocaust Studies Fellowship for "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System, $27,000.00 (external).
2001	IPFW Sabbatical Leave for "Hollywood Before the Holocaust, 1933-1941," one semester at full pay (internal). IU - Purdue Fort Wayne Research Support Fund grant for archival research on "Hollywood and the Holocaust from World War II to the End of the Studio System," $400.00 (internal).