Peter Brunette
Departments of Art and Communication
336.758.5079
E-mail: brunetpc@wfu.edu.
Education:
B.A. (1965)
M.A. (1967)
Ph.D. (1975)
Positions Held:
1970‑72: Université de Paris‑III
(La Sorbonne)‑‑Lecteur
(Instructor)
1972‑73: University of
1974‑75:
Instructor in English
1975‑2004: George Mason University‑‑Assistant
Professor of English, 1975‑79;
Associate
Professor of English,
1979‑88; Professor of English, Cultural Studies, and
Film Studies, 1988‑2004
2004-present:
Program
Courses Taught:
I have taught
a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses in film theory and film
history, critical theory, visual culture, and cultural studies.
Academic Honors (selected):
1961‑65: Full Academic Scholarship,
1967-70;
1973-74: Teaching Assistant,
1977: Participant in NEH Summer Seminar
"New Directions in the Interpretation of
British
and American Fiction" at
1979: Fellow at the American Film Institute's
Summer Workshop in Film and the
Humanities
(
1980: Participant in NEH Summer Seminar
"Modern European Novel" at
University
(Director: Albert Sonnenfeld)
1981‑82: NEH Fellowship
1981‑82: Associate Fellow, Center for Advanced Study
in the Visual Arts, National
Gallery
of Art
1982:
Fellowship,
1983:
Director, NEH Summer Seminar "Beyond Formalism: Phenomenological,
Semiotic,
and Post‑structuralist Approaches to
Film," held at
University
1984: George Mason Univ. Faculty Study Leave (Fall)
1986: George Mason Univ. Summer Stipend
1987‑88: NEH Fellowship
1992: George Mason Univ. Faculty Study Leave (Spring)
1992‑93: Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in
the Visual Arts, National Gallery
of Art
1999:
George Mason Univ. Faculty Study Leave (Spring)
2000:
2001: Elected to the National Society of Film
Critics
Publications (Books):
Documents
de civilisation: états‑unis.
anthology of readings for French university students).
Roberto
Rossellini.
by
Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory (with David
Wills).
University Press, 1989.
Shoot the
Piano Player. (Edited
volume).
1993.
Deconstruction
and the Visual Arts: Art, Media,
Architecture. (Edited
with David Wills).
The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni.
Martin
Scorsese: Interviews.
Wong Kar-Wai.
Series Editor:
Society for
Cinema Studies Translation Series (
Jean
Mitry, The
Aesthetics and Psychology of Cinema, 1997.
Francesco Casetti, Inside the Gaze,
1999.
Conversations
With Filmmakers (University Press of
Mississippi): 41 volumes published
to-date, over 20
additional volumes being prepared.
Publications:
(Articles and Review‑Essays; selected):
"Faces
in the Mirror: Twain's Pauper, Warner's
Prince," in The Classic American Novel
and the Movies, ed. Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin.
Ungar, 1977.
"Two
Wrights, One Wrong," in The Modern
American Novel and the Movies, ed. Gerald
Peary and Roger Shatzkin.
adaptation of Native Son).
"How Brechtian Is Rossellini?" in Film Criticism (Spring, 1979).
Reprinted in Roberto
Rossellini (British Film Institute Dossier No. 8).
"Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs," in American Cartoon Animation, ed.
Gerald and
Dannis Peary.
"Filming
Words: Wenders,
Handke, and The
Goalie's Anxiety," in Modern European
Filmmakers
and the Art of Adaptation, ed.
Andrew S. Horton and Joan Magretta.
"Unity
and Diversity in Paisan," Studies in
the Literary Imagination (Special issue on film
narrative; Spring, 1983).
Reprinted in The Cinematic Text: Methods and
Approaches, ed. R. Barton Palmer (New York: AMS Press, 1989).
"Recent
Italian Film," Italian Quarterly (Winter
1984‑85).
"Rossellini
and Cinematic Realism," Cinema Journal (Fall,
1985).
"Toward
a Deconstructive Theory of Film," Studies in the Literary Imagination
(Special
issue on film theory; Spring, 1986). Revised version reprinted in The Cinematic
Text:
Methods and Approaches, ed. R. Barton Palmer (
1989).
"Visual
Motifs in Rossellini's Voyage to
Movies, ed. Peter Lehman. (Tallahassee: Florida State
University Press, 1990).
"The
Three Stooges and the (Anti‑) Narrative of Violence: De(con)structive Comedy," in
Comedy/Cinema/Theory,
ed. Andrew
Horton. (
Press, 1991).
"Bilan de recherches,"
Hors cadre [
"Images
Off: Ulmer's Teletheory,"
Diacritics (Summer,
1993; with David Wills).
"Electronic
Bodies/Real Bodies: Reading the Evening
News," in Thinking Bodies, ed.
Juliet Flower MacCannell. (Stanford University
Press, 1994).
"Post-structuralism
in Film Studies," in The
"But
Nothing Happens: The Everyday in Postwar
French Film," in The Art of the
Everyday: The Quotidian
in Postwar French Culture, ed.
Lynn Gumpert.
New
“Deserto Rosso/Red Desert,” in The Cinema of Italy, ed. Giorgio Bertellini.
Wallflower
Press, 2004.
“Nowell-Smith Meets Visconti, Redux: The Old and
the New,” in Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 16 (March
2005). http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n16brunette. See
also Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, “It Ain’t
Me Babe: A Response to Brunette,” in Film-Philosophy,
vol. 9, no. 17 (March 2005). http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n17nowell-smith.
See also Peggy Kamuf,
"'The Impossible Science of the Unique Being': On Brunette and
Wills'
Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory,
in Quarterly Review of Film and
Video (XII, 4, pp. 77‑91).
Publications:
(Interviews; selected):
"The
Future of the Cinema Belongs to Poets:
An Interview with Fernando Arrabal,"
Cineaste,
VII, 2 (Winter, 1976).
(With Gerald Peary).
"An
Interview with James M. Cain," Film Comment (May‑June,
1976). Reprinted in
Backstory:
Interviews with Screenwriters of
McGilligan.
"An
Interview with Vittorio Taviani,"
Film Quarterly (Spring,
1983).
"An
Interview with Agnieska Holland," Cineaste
(Fall, 1986).
"Writing
for Visconti:
An Interview with Suso Cecchi
D'Amico," Sight & Sound (Winter,
1986‑87).
"The
Producer and the Scriptgirl," Sight &
Sound (Winter 1988‑89). [Interview with
French producer Anatole Dauman].
"A
Conversation with Marco Bellocchio," Film Quarterly (Fall, 1989).
"A
Conversation with Helma Sanders‑Brahms," Film
Quarterly (Winter, 1991).
"Shut Up
and Just Do It!," Sight & Sound
(Winter 1990‑91). [Interview with
Canadian
film director Patricia Rozema.]
"Just Looking," Sight & Sound (London Film
Festival Supplement, November, 1991).
[Interview with Australian film director Joceyln
Moorhouse.]
"The
Spatial Arts: An Interview with Jacques
Derrida," in Brunette and Wills,
Deconstruction and the Visual Arts (with David Wills).
"Incontro con Gus Van Sant," Filmcritica (Rome; April, 1992).
"A
Conversation with Holly Fisher," Film Quarterly (Winter,
1993‑94).
[NOTE: In addition to the above, interview‑articles
on David Mamet, Jean‑Paul
Rappeneau, Tom Stoppard, Pavel Lounguine, Claude Berri,
Krzysztof Kieslowski, Peter
Medak, John Singleton, Mike Leigh, Maurice Pialat, Nikita Mikhalkov,
Catherine
Deneuve, Baz Luhrmann,
Jean‑Claude Lauzon, Gary Oldman,
Blanchett, Janet Leigh, Bruce Beresford, Terence Stamp,
Kevin Smith, Atom Egoyan, and
over fifty other directors and actors have appeared,
primarily, in The New York Times, The
Film Reviews: From 1995 to 2001, I was
a regular weekly film reviewer for Film.com, and thereafter I was chief film
critic for indieWIRE.com, the leading website for foreign and independent film,
until 2004. Currently I am a regular
reviewer for Screen International, the leading British trade journal.
Book Reviews: Since 1975, I have written
some 100 reviews of books on film, critical theory, Italian literature and
culture, and related topics. These
reviews have appeared chiefly in The New York Times Book Review, as well
as in TLS, The New Republic, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, American Film,
The Washington Post Book World, Film Quarterly, The Quarterly
Review of Film Studies, The Velvet Light Trap, Wide Angle, Take
One, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune Book
World, Sub‑Stance, and elsewhere.
Work in Progress:
A book on visual culture from a deconstructive perspective.
A book on the films of Luchino Visconti.
Conference Activities (selected):
"Cinematic,
Structural, and Psychological Elements in Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs," presented at the 1978 Society for
Cinema Studies Conference at
University.
"Just
How Brechtian Is Rossellini?" presented at the
1979 Purdue University Film
Conference.
"Genre
and Anti‑Genre: Another Look at Truffaut's The Bride ore Black," presented at
the 1979
"Language
and the Narrator of Woolf's Between the Acts,"
presented at the Conference
on Narrative Technique at Eastern
Chair, 1983 MLA Convention
Film Division Panel on "Theories of Cinematic Realism."
“Derrida
and Lacan in Film Theory," presented at 1983 MLA
Convention.
"Rossellini's
Critique of Realism," paper presented at Ohio University Film Conference,
"Deconstructive
Film Criticism," paper presented at Semiotics of Cinema Conference,
"Rossellini
and Italian Television," paper presented at MLA Convention (December,
1984).
Chair, 1985
Society for Cinema Studies panel on "Deconstructing Classical and Modern
Film
Theory" (June,
1985).
"Rossellini's
Women," paper presented at the 1986 Florida State University Conference on
Literature
and Film (January, 1986).
"The Parergon: Derrida's
Tale of the Frame," paper presented at Society for Cinema
Studies conference in
"Neorealism and the Question of Boundaries," paper
presented at MLA convention in San
Francisco
(December, 1987).
"The
Three Stooges and the (Anti‑) Narrative of Violence: De(con)structive Comedy,"
paper presented at Society for Cinema Studies conference in
1989).
"Originals
and Copies: Problematizing
Adaptation," paper presented at 1989 MLA
conference in
"Reading
the Evening (Television) News," paper presented at International
Association
for Philosophy and Literature conference,
"Teletheory or Video Theory," paper presented (with
David Wills) at 1990 MLA
convention in
Chair, 1990
College Art Association panel on "Critical Theory, Film, and the Other
Visual
Arts,"
"Antonioni as Feminist," paper presented at 1991 MLA
conference in
"The
Ontology of Fat: Fatty Arbuckle and the
Writing of the Body on Film," paper
` presented at 1991 MLA conference in
"The
Films of Michelangelo Antonioni: Existential Alienation, Abstract
Expressionism, or
Social
Critique?," paper presented at 1996 Society for
Cinema Studies conference
in
“Confessions
of a Poststructuralist Film Critic, Or How I Found Différance at Planet
“(Sexual) Politics in Visconti’s
Ossessione,” paper presented at 2003 SCMS
conference
in
Other Activities (selected):
Regular
speaker at Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, on Italian,
German, and European film in general (1981‑1990).
Participant
in invited seminar on "Questions of Representation" at the Center for
Advanced
Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (October 16,
1981).
Presented
formal colloquium on "Rossellini and Cinematic Realism" at the Center
for
Advanced Study in the Visual Arts," National Gallery of Art
(March 11, 1982).
Presented
lecture/film series on "The Historical Films of Roberto Rossellini"
for the
Smithsonian
Associates (January‑February,
1982).
Presented a
lecture/film series on "The Films of Kenj Mizoguchi" at the National Gallery
of Art (February‑March, 1985).
Moderator,
all‑day panel on painting and writing with Michel Butor
and Mehdi Qotbi,
Presented a
lecture/film series on "The Films of Luchino Visconti" at the National Gallery
of Art (February‑May, 1987).
Gave a
lecture at
1987).
Named to Film
Advisory Committee, National Gallery of Art (1987‑present).
Invited
guest, international symposium on Roberto Rossellini,
TX (October 23‑25, 1987).
Invited speaker, American Association for
Italian Studies,
(
Guest
Curator, retrospective of the films of Luchino Visconti, Brooklyn Museum of Art
(January‑February, 1992).
U. S.
Correspondent, Filmcritica [
"Thinking
the Body in the Films of Peter Greenaway,"
colloquium lecture at the Center for
Advanced
Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, January 1993.
"Interpreting
Antonioni:
Feminist avant la lettre?", invited lecture
at the University of
"Rossellini's Prise
de Pouvoir par Louis XIV: Writing/Reading the Body on Film,"
invited
paper presented at a conference on "Performing the
Body," Center for 17th and
18th
Century Studies, UCLA, April 1993.
Artistic Director, Key Sunday Cinema Club, Washington, D. C.,
1994-present.
Film critic, Film.com (on-line film magazine), 1996-2001.
Invited
speaker on “After Godzilla,” for the Dutch Film Critics Association at the
Gave a
lecture at Columbia University Film Seminars on “Triangles and (Sexual)
Politics in
Visconti’s Ossessione,”
(October 4, 2001).
Moderated panel (as invited guest) on Fiction/Documentary
Filmmaking, Sundance Film Festival, 2003.
Chief Film Critic, indieWIRE.com, 2003-04.
Reviewer, Screen International, 2003-
Editorial Board, Cinema Journal, 2003-
“Thirteen
Conversations About One Thing: Fellini’s La Dolce Vita,” invited lecture at Felliniana
Conference,
Member, International Critics Society (FIPRESCI) jury, Bangkok International Film Festival, January
2004.
Audio Commentary, DVD of Antonioni’s Blow-up. Warner Home Video, 2004.
Essay to accompany DVD of Rossellini’s Flowers of St. Francis. Criterion Collection, forthcoming.
Audio Commentary, DVD of Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (with Annette Insdorf). Criterion
Collection,
forthcoming.
Department and University Service (chiefly while at
Member, Faculty Senate, 1978‑81.
Director of Graduate Studies, English Department, 1980‑81.
Chair, English Department Appointments Committee, 1980‑81,
1985‑87.
Chair, English Dept. Reappointments, Promotion, and Tenure
Committee, 1982‑84.
Chair, English Dept. Full Professors
Committee, 1993‑present.
Member,
Graduate Committee, 1996-1998, 2003-present
Co-director, Film and Media
Studies program, 1995-99.
Member, Executive Committee, Cultural Studies
program, 1999-
Director, Film and Media Studies program, 2000-
Director, Film Studies Program (
Languages:
Fluent in French and Italian, some knowledge of Spanish and German.