Date Updated
8-2-2024
Department
Radio-Television-Film Program; Department of Film,Theatre & Dance
Academic Rank
Professor
Year Retired from SJSU
2023 (FERP)
Educational Background
University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Film, Ph.D 2003
University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of English, M.A. 1985
University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of English, B.A. 1983
Dissertation Title
To Speak of Love: Narrative, Desire, and the 1940s Woman’s Film. UCLA, 2003.
Teaching Experience
Professor, San Jose State University ‐ TV, Radio, Film and Theatre, 2015-
Associate Professor, San Jose State University, TV, Radio, Film & Theatre, 2011-2015
Assistant Professor, San Jose State University,TV, Radio, Film and Theatre, 2006-2011
Lecturer, San Jose State University, TV, Radio, Film and Theatre, 2002-2006
Administrative and Professional Experience
See attached CV
Service
See attached CV
Selected Publications
Scholarly Publications (Peer-Reviewed)
Alison L. McKee. "To have and to hold: The possessive spectator, the spinster narrative, and Katharine Hepburn in David Lean's Summertime (1955)" Journal of Film and Video Vol. 73 Iss. 2 (2021) p. 26 - 45
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/faculty_rsca/2994/
“The Price of Salt, Carol, and Queer Narrative Desire(s).” Book chapter. Patricia Highsmith, Film, and Adaptation. Eds. Wieland Schwanebeck and Douglas McFarland. Macmillan. Forthcoming 2018.
The Woman’s Film of the 1940s: Gender, Narrative and History. Book. New York and London: Routledge, 2014 https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/uss/20/ https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/faculty_books/95/
“’Think of Me Fondly’: Voice, Body, Affect, and Performance in Prince/Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.” Studies in Musical Theatre 7:3. December 2013. https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/smt.7.3.309_1
“Actual v. Virtual Venice as Constructed Environments: Space, Place, and Narrative Architecture in Second Life.” International Journal of the Constructed Environment. 1:3. 2011. https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/actual-v-virtual-venice-as-constructed-environments
“History, Hybridity, and Indeterminate Space in the Parker-Hulme Murder: Heavenly Creatures and New Zealand Cinema.” In New Zealand Cinema: Interpreting the Past, eds. Alistair Fox, Barry Keith Grant, Hilary Radner. Intellect UK/The Chicago of University Press. 2011.
“It seems familiar, but I can’t quite remember:’ Amnesia and the Dislocation of History and Gender in Random Harvest (1942).” Bright Lights Film Journal. August 2010. Issue 69. https://brightlightsfilm.com/it-seems-familiar-but-i-cant-quite-remember-amnesia-and-the-dislocation-of-history-and-gender-in-random-harvest-1942/#.Wz_tq9JKi70
“What’s Love Got to Do with It? History and Melodrama in the 1940s Woman’s Film.” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 39.2 (December 2009). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/376066
“Rewriting Desire from a Feminist Perspective: Classical Film Narrative and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).” The Bulletin of the Institute of Language and Culture. Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Vol. 23, 2006 (Japanese translation).
“’L’affaire Praslin’ and All This, and Heaven Too: Gender, Genre, and History in the 1940s Woman’s Film.” The Velvet Light Trap, Spring 1995.
“Negotiating Gender in Post-World War II America.” Book Review, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 1994.
“She Had Eyes a Man Could Drown In: Narrative, Desire, and the Female Gaze in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” Literature/Film Quarterly, 20-2, 1992. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/trft_pub/5/
Invited Talks
“’I’ve Kissed You Through Two Centuries’: Love and History Among the Film Archives.” Keynote Speaker. Undergraduate Research Symposium. School of Theatre, Film & Television. Undergraduate Research Symposium. University of Arizona. April 13, 2017.
Alison L. McKee. "Classical Hollywood Cinema and the Woman’s Film" San Jose State University (2016)
“Is Feminist the new F-Word? A Panel on Women in Media.” Panel Co-Chair. Kimb Massey, Lily Hills, Karen Hudson. San José State University, San José, CA. March 24, 2011.
“D.W. Griffith and Broken Blossoms (1919): Melodramas of Difference.” Asian-American Women in American Cinema seminar. Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA. October 27, 2006.
“Rewriting Desire from a Feminist Perspective: Classical Film Narrative and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).” International Symposium on Film/History/Feminism (co-panelists Vicki Callahan, Laura Mulvey, Janet Staiger, Patricia White), Language and Culture Center and the Department of Art Studies of the Faculty of Letters, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo. November 12, 2005.
Peer-Reviewed Conferences
“Stillness and the Moving Image in David Lean's Summertime, 1955.” The Image Knowledge Community International Conference. Venice, Italy. Paper presented October 31, 2017.
“The Women of Penny Dreadful: Gothic, Horror, and the Melodramatic Imagination.” Gothic Feminism Conference. The University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Paper presented May 2017.
“Home and Hybridity in Melodrama and Film Noir.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Chicago, IL. Paper presented March 26, 2017.
“’I’m Ready for My Close-Up’: Anglo-American Home-Front Films During World War II.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Montreal, Québec. March 25-29, 2015.
“Exploring Limits: Melodrama's Bodies, Space, and Ethics.” Panel Chair, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Montreal, Québec. March 25-29, 2015.
“Imag(in)ing World War II: Close-Ups and the Female Star in the 1940s Wartime Woman’s Film.” Paper presented at the Film & History Conference. Madison, WI. October 29-November 2, 2014.
“New Studies in Melodrama.” Panel Chair, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 19-23, 2014.
“Toward an Androgynous Spectatorship: Reevaluating Classical Hollywood Cinema via the 1940s Woman’s Film.” Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 19-23, 2014.
“Real Space/Virtual Space: Venice, Narrative Architecture and Metaverse Building in Second Life.” Paper presented at the International Conference on the Constructed Image. In conjunction with the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Venice, Italy. November 17-19, 2010.
“Think Globally, Act Locally: Implementing Global Citizenship at San José State University.” Paper presented at the Global Citizenship for the 21st Century conference. The International Center. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA. November 15-16, 2009.
"Cinema and Visual Culture" Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Otago, New Zealand, November 2008.
"Remapping the Parker-Hulme Case: History, Narrative, and Visual Culture" Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, Otago, New Zealand, November 2008.
"History, Memory, Imagination: Ontologies of the Image" Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, March 2008.
"That Undecidable Space: Telling and Retelling History, Memory, and Fantasy in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) and the Parker-Hulme Affair" Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, San Francisco, CA., March 2008.
"The Fourth World: The Collision of History, Memory, and Fantasy in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures and the Parker-Hulme Affair" Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Philadelphia, March 2008.
"Cinema and 9/11" Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, March 2007.
"The Day the Towers Fell: Nation, Melodrama, and Trauma Cinema in the Context of 9/11" Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, March 2007.
For additional scholarly contributions & presentations prior to 2007 see attached CV
Files
Download Curriculum Vitae (113 KB)
Personal Commentary
Dr. Alison L. McKee earned a BA and MA in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara where she studied film and literature in the English and Film Studies departments. She went on to get a PhD in film and media studies at UCLA, focusing on film history, narrative, and gender issues in classical American cinema. She has presented and published numerous papers at national and international film and television conferences, and she has been invited to speak in the US and abroad on a range of topics related to film, gender, ethnicity, and politics.
For Honors and Awards see attached CV.