Dr Christian Long
Position
Research fellow, tutor, temporary lecturer
Qualifications
- M.A. University of New Hampshire, 2003
- Ph.D. Vanderbilt University, 2008
Contact Details
Phone: +64 3 364 2987
Internal Phone: TBA
christian.long@canterbury.ac.nz
Postal address:
English Programme
School of Humanities
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Physical address:
TBA
Office Hours:
If for some reason you need the input of an unpaid research fellow, make an appointment.
Research
My current major research project, The World Atlas of American Cinema 1945-2010, writes a critical history of American cinema (and cinema criticism) through digital cartography. I will be posting draft versions of chapters and articles at christian-long.org.
A second project, The Fictional Lives of American Presidents, a book I am co-editing with Jeff Menne, analyses the multiple ways in which the presence of an actual US president in a fictional narrative shapes perceptions of what the president actually does as President of the United States . In addition to co-authoring the introduction, I contribute a chapter on the ways in which imagined White House secret passages in Dave, Murder at 1600 and Shadow Conspiracy re-imagine the US political system along the lines of an all-powerful corporate executive model rather than along the lines of three co-equal branches that ensure checks and balances.
As a research fellow, I have a mess of article-sized irons in the research fire:
- Rehabilitating Babbittry in Babbitt, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and The Corrections
- Workplace safety in Arthur Hailey's Hotel, Airport, and Wheels
- Everyday interactions with suburban transportation infrastructure, class mobility, and gender politics in The Family Man, The Weather Man, American Beauty, Office Space, and subUrbia
- Suburban women's experiences and understandings of transportation infrastructure in Jean Kerr stories and Phyllis McGinley poems
- Burt Reynolds, Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the locations of the American present
- Zoning, education and class mobility in Slums of Beverly Hills and The Breakfast Club
- The emptiness of success according to Albert Brooks, Steve Coogan, and Richard Nixon
- Effacing maps of Africa in H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, The Yellow God: An Idol of Africa, and She and Allan
- Collaboration, authorship and snobbery as verification: Shakespeare in Love and Anonymous (co-authored with Jennifer Clement)
- Jerry Lewis and non-human animals – more “normal” than you'd think
Publications
“Running Out of Gas: The Energy Crisis in 1970s Suburban Narratives” Canadian Review of American Studies 41.3 (2011)
“No Country for Grumpy Old Men: Jack Lemmon and the Age Limits of Suburbia” forthcoming in Australasian Journal of American Studies
“Stateless Cartography in Eric Ambler novels: Escape routes at the edges of legality” forthcoming in The Cartographical Necessity of Exile, Karen Bishop ed.
“Educating Scholars: Doctoral Education in the Humanities ” book review in NeoAmericanist 5.2 (2011)
“Mapping Suburban Fiction” under review at Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association
Teaching
My primary teaching interest is in post-1960s American cinema, both independent and major studio productions. In the past I have shared the teaching load in CINE 101 What Is Cinema?, CINE 102 World Cinema in the 21 st Century, and CINE 202 Film and Theory. I was the instructor for CINE 220 American Independent Cinema 1960-2000 . I have also worked as a tutor, marker, and lecturer to ENGL 102 Introduction to English , ENGL 107 Shakespeare, ENGL 117 Writing the Academic Essay , ENGL 132 Cultural Studies: Reading Culture , ENGL 213 Children's Classics, ENGL 236/AMST 216 Contemporary American Literature, ENGL 237/AMST 222 Hardboiled LA, ENGL 315 The Twentieth Century Novel, and ENGL 408 Screen Shakespeare, which I team-taught with Jennifer Clement
Background
I was born and raised, with my three sisters, in the suburbs of Chicago. My academic career has its roots in jobs I worked to pay for school. Before I went to university, I worked in structural and residential steel fabrication. I also held to two part-time jobs: for ten years I was a box office cashier, projection booth second-in-command and telephone voice of a multiplex cinema; I also worked in the audio-visual department of my local public library. My research puts my previous work lives into conversation, looking at cinema and literature with special attention to spatial and class politics that accompany the growth of suburbia in the United States.