Carnegie Mellon University

David Shumway

David Shumway

Professor of English and Director of Literary and Cultural Studies

Bio

I research and teach in American culture and cultural theory. My special interests in American culture include film, popular music, and fiction from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. My theoretical interests concern Marxism, media theory, and the politics of literary form. I am the author of Michel Foucault, Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of American Literature as an Academic Discipline, Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis, John Sayles, and Rock Star: The Making of Cultural Icons from Elvis to Springsteen. I have just completed a study of realism in print fiction, film, theater, and TV in the U. S. during the 20th century. Current projects include a history of theory in literary studies in the U.S. and editing The World of Leonard Cohen for Cambridge University Press.

Education

Ph.D., Indiana University
MA, Indiana University
BA, New College of Hofstra University

CV

Research

American culture, 20th and 21st centuries, film, the novel, popular music

Publications

“What’s Love Got to Do with It? Romance and Intimacy in an Age of Hooking Up,” The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love, Ed. Ann Brooks. New York: Routledge, 2022, 15-25.

“Stardom and Fandom,” The World of Bob Dylan, Ed. Sean Latham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 313-324.

“How New Literary History became a Theory Journal.” Symploke. 7, nos. 1-2 (2019): 459-464.

“What is Realism?” Storywords: A Journal of Narrative Studies 9.1-2 (2018):183-195.

"The University, Neoliberalism, and the Humanities: A History." Humanities 6. 4 (2017): 83, http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/6/4/83.

“Countercultures,” The Cambridge History of Postmodernism. Ed. Brian McHale, Len Platt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 112-126.

"The Emergence of the Singer-Songwriter." The Cambridge Companion to the Singer Songwriter. Ed. Justin and Katherine Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 11-20.

"Woody Allen: the Charlie Chaplin of the New Hollywood." The Blackwell Companion to Film Comedy. Ed. Andrew Horton & Joanna Rapf Malden. MA: Blackwell, 2012.

"Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage." The Film Genre Reader IV. Ed. Barry Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012, 381-401 (also in 2nd and 3rd ed). Rpt. from Cinema Journal.

"The Star System in Literary Studies." PMLA 112 (January 1997): 85-100.