Catherine Jurca's Research
My research interests include classical Hollywood film, film history, twentieth-century American literature, and urban studies.
My work on Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s combines archival research and close “reading” to better understand the relationship between individual films and the concrete business practices that went into their production, distribution, and exhibition. The most recent book, Hollywood 1938: Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year, analyzes an unprecedented, industry-wide public relations campaign through which film-makers and exhibitors tried to sell a deeply disenchanted public on the centrality of the movies to their lives and communities. Drawing on the records of studio personnel, independent exhibitors, moviegoers, and the motion pictures themselves, I describe how the industry’s troubles changed the making, marketing, and meaning of films in 1938 and beyond. Current research projects examine the influence of the film industry’s oligopolistic structure on the movies it made, the relationship between the films of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges, and the role of Hollywood film in post-World War II reconversion.
I am originally trained as a literary critic, and I also study American literature, primarily the novel, in its broader cultural contexts. My first book, White Diaspora: The Suburb and the Twentieth-Century American Novel, argues for the central role of the suburban novel, with its focus on spiritual impoverishment and self-pity, in creating an enduring portrait of the white middle class as the victim of its own success.
Last updated: April 18, 2012 13:40
