People
Ramona Curry
Contact Information
268 English
217- 244-1665
rcurry@illinois.edu
Current Courses
- ENGLISH 104: Introduction to Film
- ENGLISH 199: Open Undergraduate Seminar (Topic: Magical Empire: The Disney Phenomenon from Cultural, Artistic & Global Economic Perspectives)
- ENGLISH 273: American Film Since 1950
- ENGLISH 300: Writing About Literature (Topic: Writing Film Criticism)
Areas of Interest
Critical theory and history of film and other forms of media and 20th-21st century popular culture, in the U.S. and internationally; issues of gender and racial representation in cross-cultural media adaptations and their circulation.
Publications
Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon (University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
Essays in U.S. and international journals and edited collections on the cross-cultural circulation and impact of films and popular media forms; star studies approaches to U.S. and international media (e.g., analyses of Madonna, Xuxa, and Ivy Ling Po as cultural signs); the history and social impact of media institutions (e.g., female stars in 1910s German cinema; Hong Kong films of the 1960s); feminist film and video production.
Selected Essays in Journals and Anthologies
“Early Crossover Marketing of Hong Kong Cinema,” in Poshek Fu, editor, Forever China: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema (University of Illinois Press/ Hong Kong Press , forthcoming Spring 2008.)
“Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne: Issues in Early Crossover Marketing of Hong Kong Cinema.” Working Papers of the David C. Lam Institute for East West Studies (LEWI), #26 (June 2004).
“Henny Porten im Ersten Weltkrieg” in Kino der Kaiserzeit: Zwischen Tradition und Moderne, (Film in the Kaiser’s Time: Between Tradition and the Modern), ed. by Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Wedel (edition text + kritik, 2002) 175-87. [German translation of English version "Kino und Krieg: How Early German Film Stars Helped Sell the War(es),"in Film and the First World War, Karel Dibbets and Bert Hogenkamp, ed. (University of Amsterdam Press, 1995) 139-48.]
“Xuxa at the Borders of U.S. TV: Checked for Gender, Race and National Identity,” in Eileen Meehan and Ellen Riordan, eds., Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) 240-56. Co-authored with Angharad Valdivia. [Revised version of "Xuxa at the Borders of Global TV: The Institutionalization and Marginalization of Brazil's Blonde Ambition," co authored with Angharad Valdivia, Camera Obscura 38 (Summer 1998): 32-61.]
“Madonna von Marilyn zu Marlene: Pastiche oder Parodie,” in Klaus Neumann-Braun, ed., Viva MTV! Popmusik im Fernsehen. (Suhrkamp, 1999) 175-204.. [Reprinted from “Madonna von Marilyn zu Marlene: Pastiche oder Parodie,” in Vom Doppelleben der Bilder (The Duplicity of Images), Barbara Naumann, ed., (Wilhelm Fink, 1993) 219-47.]
The above-named anthologies published the author's German translation and revision of the original essay in English: "Madonna from Marilyn to Marlene: Pastiche or Parody, Journal of Film and Video 42.2 (Summer 1990): 15-30.
"Playing with Desire: Asta Nielsen as Comedic Ingenue," Lähikuva (Close-Up; Finnish film studies quarterly), No. 4, 1998, 36-43.
Selected Reviews and Reports
“A Brief History of the Ms in SCMS,” in the special anniversary section "An Archive for the Future," Camera Obscura 63 (December 2006): 159-165.
Review of Robert R. Shandley, Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadows of the Third Reich (Rutgers University Press, 2001), in Jump Cut @ url www.ejumpcut.org (Fall 2002).
“The Classroom and the World: Connecting Media Studies to Student Experience,” Cinema Journal 39.4 (2000): 81-93. (Curated, edited, and introduced special section on media pedagogy).
“Film Theory,” in Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender, eds., Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge (Routledge, 2000): 860-63.
"Twenty-five Years of the Society for Cinema Studies: A Socio-Political History," Journal of Film and Video 38.2 (1986): 43-57.
Work in Progress
Essay on 1950s-60s Hong Kong film versions of the Mulan tale; monograph on the distribution of Hong Kong/Chinese films in the U.S. in the 1950s-60s (pre “kung fu” wave); edited collection on popular icons in international, historical context.