Susan M White

Professor, Emerita

Susan White is Professor of Film and Comparative Literature in the Department of English at the University of Arizona.  After completing undergraduate degrees at Université Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle (Cinema) and UC Berkeley (Semiotics), White received her M.A. in French and her Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University’s Humanities Center.  Professor White’s The Cinema of Max Ophuls (1995, Columbia UP) was one of the first book-length studies on the director in English, and the first extended reading of Ophuls from the perspective of gender theory.  White’s publications include essays on the films of Stanley Kubrick, Nicholas Ray, and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as three commentary tracks on Ophuls’ films for Criterion.  She has taught cinema courses at Paris III, the École Normale Supérieure, Fribourg University in Fribourg, Swizerland.  Over the past couple of years, her research has focused on performance in cinema, including the work of Marlon Brando, and B-noir films.  She teaches courses on the films of Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lynch, women’s cinema, melodrama, film noir, the genre film, the Western, cinematography, “Essential Cinema”, and comparative literature.  Recently she has taught film and literature courses on “Labyrinths” and “Visions of America.”