Associate Professor
301.405.1359
molouns@umd.edu
Myron Lounsbury, Associate Professor, is currently investigating the role of film theatres (e. g., AFI Silver), television corporations (Discovery Communications), documentary filmmakers (Final Cut Productions), high schools (Montgomery Blair) and community colleges (Montgomery College), and nonprofit organizations (IMPACT Silver Spring) within an increasingly gentrified Silver Spring, Maryland. His research also focuses on Washington, D. C., and includes the impact of museums (The National Gallery) and repertory theatres (E-Street Landmark) in introducing the public to American movie history and contemporary national cinemas around the globe. His research is an extension of his earlier investigation of the New York film, 1945-1970, which situated the practice of film theory and criticism in the context of urban institutions (movie theatres, film societies, museums and art galleries, college campuses, bookstores, radio stations) to argue that the reception of the motion picture intersected with the activities of European artists and intellectuals, as well as behavioral scientists, and contributed to the national debate regarding good taste and cultural literacy in the emerging era of television and mass communications. His initial publications addressed the course of film reception in the decades of the genteel tradition, the post-World War II Hollywood movie industry and the Great Depression. Throughout, he has been guided by a central question: What is the role of the public artist-intellectual and cultural institutions in redefining, for the American consumer, what constitutes art, community and communication in a changing world of media technology, urban and suburban planning, and foreign policy?
Degrees:
Ph.D. American
Civilization (University of Pennsylvania, 1966)
M.A. American Civilization (University of Pennsylvania, 1962)
B.A. History (Duke University, 1961)
Publications:
- "Against
the American Game: The 'Strenuous Life' of Willard Huntington Wright,"
Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 5, ed. Jack
Salzman. New York: Burt Franklin & Company, 1980. 507-55.
- Editor,
"Popular Literature" Section, American Studies: An Annotated
Bibliography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Editor,The
Progress and Poetry of the Movies: A Second Book of Film Criticism by
Vachel Lindsay. Lanham, Maryland & London: Scarecrow Press. 1995.
- "'The
Gathered Light': History, Criticism and the Rise of the American Film,"
Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5 (Winter 1980): 49-85.
- The
Origins of American Film Criticism, 1909-1939. New York: Arno Press,
1973.
- "'Flashes
of Lightning': The Moving Picture in the Progressive Era." Journal
of Popular Culture 3 (Spring 1970): 769-97.
Courses
Taught:
- Introduction
to Film Culture Studies (undergraduate)
- American Film Culture in
the 1950s (undergraduate)
- American Film Culture in
the 1960s (undergraduate)
- Senior Seminar in American
Studies (undergraduate)
- Culture and Communications,
1945-1970 (graduate)
- Pedagogies
Seminar in American Studies (graduate)
- Site-Webs:
The Cultures of Theory, 1985-present (graduate)
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