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David Lugowski, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

David Lugowski

David M. Lugowski holds a BS in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MA and a PhD in cinema studies from NYU. Before coming to Manhattanville, he taught at NYU, Sacred Heart University, CUNY/College of Staten Island, Columbia University and MIT. He joined Manhattanville in 2000 and began directing the interdisciplinary Communication Studies program during his first year, getting a state-accredited major approved in 2005. As a member of the English department, he teaches courses in film history, theory and criticism, handling survey classes as well as courses in genre and gender study, major directors and international cinemas ranging from India to Scandinavia and Japan. For Communication Studies Prof. Lugowski has also taught theory surveys, the history of media technology from Gutenberg to the internet, and studies in minority cultures and the media. Many of his greatest professional joys have come from teaching students about films of various styles, historical periods, and cultures, and in encouraging students to engage with theoretical concepts to think more actively and critically about the media.

Dr. Lugowski has also enjoyed presenting his work on film history at scholarly conferences and invited talks at colleges, libraries and popular venues, including New York City public TV. In 2008 he joined the editorial board of Cinema Journal. His main areas of research include queer and feminist theory, American cinema of the Great Depression, and the representation and performance of gender and sexuality, but he has also written on Swedish documentary, French art film, the avant-garde, Yiddish-language cinema and various international filmmakers.

Lugowski has published in such academic periodicals as Cinema Journal, Cineaste, Arizona Quarterly, and Senses of Cinema, in reference works including The International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture and The Encyclopedia of Documentary Film, and in anthologies including Film and Sexual Politics, American Cinema of the 1930s: Themes and Variations, Screening Genders, Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness and Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method. Forthcoming works examine Hollywood's female stars of the 1930s and 40s in chapters for Rutgers University Press' "Star Decades" series, an essay for Blackwell's five-volume History of American Cinema, and a book-length study of James Whale's films contracted by the University of California Press.