Originally delivered as an address to the Midwest Conference on Language, Literature and Media (MCLLM) in DeKalb, Illinois. 2 April 2005.

Here is a list of some of the films John Huston has directed which I have screened:
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948)
Key Largo (1948)
The African Queen (1951)
Moby Dick (1956)
The Misfits (1961)
The Bible: …

In Part I of this essay I opined that post-Romantic ideology in American and British literature had led to a general tendency to locate goodness in the individual and evil in institutions (that alternately tyrannize …

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold’s series of essays that were later collected together as a book, is the title. No matter how many times I tell students–and I do–”Thus …

I can’t remember if I’ve ever actually seen a Chaplin movie in its entirety before A King in New York, and it was not at all what I expected. There are parts of it that …

My favorite Disney film has always been (and probably still is) Beauty and the Beast.
Flush from seeing the film and falling in love with it, I talked my parents into making a rare sojourn into …