Biography
Through her retirement from university teaching at the end of 2018, Ramona Curry designed and delivered courses on the histories, theories, and strategies for writing about cinema and other forms of popular media and culture. Her research focuses on the sociocultural impact of media institutions, including film stars and cinema distribution and exhibition historically. She has written extensively about German and more recently about Hong Kong cinema of the mid-20th century. She is author of Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon (U of Minnesota P, 1996) and numerous essays that have appeared in U.S. and international anthologies and journals, including Cinema Journal, The Journal of Women’s History, Journal of Film and Video, and Camera Obscura.
Prof. Curry taught at Hong Kong Baptist University as the recipient of a 2004 Fulbright Award and spent Spring 2015 as the "Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies" at Uppsala University in Sweden. She is currently completing a monograph entitled Trading in Cultural Spaces: How Chinese Film Came to America, which takes an urban cultural geographic and historiographic approach to rewriting American cinema history “from the margins.” The archive-research-intensive project has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2008, 2011) and the University of Illinois Mid-Career Faculty Release Time Award (2014).
Research Interests
issues of gender, race/ethnicity and class in media
theories and practices in media genre
cross-cultural media adaptations
popular culture/media stars
international and American cinema history
historiography of cinema
Research Description
Abstract for the NEH-Funded monograph project Trading in Cultural Spaces: How Chinese Film Came to America.Cinema scholars have well documented how movies "made in the USA"have dominated screens internationally for 90 years, but as yetinsufficiently addressed the historical and on-going impact of intra-regional and community-based media circuits around the globe thatdo not fit the “West to the Rest” model. Curry's book-in-progress, entitled “Trading in Cultural Spaces: How Chinese FIlm Came to America” draws on dense archival research to document individuals, practices, and locales comprising an unwritten strand of American film history: the trans-Pacific flow of Chinese movies into and within the U.S. From the early 20th century such films have challenged stereotypes and forged avenues for cross-cultural exchange. By recovering multiple Chinese American and supporting voices, images and multicultural networks, my project aims to refocus cinema history on its prior margins, to enrich transnational and national film and social histories and make intellectual contributions consonant with the NEH "We the People" and "Bridging Cultures" initiatives.
Education
B.A. University of Chicago
M.A. University of Tuebingen, Germany
Ph.D. Radio/TV/Film, Northwestern University
Courses Taught
Engl 396 honors seminar: Theories of Popular Culture
Engl/MACS 503: Historiography of Cinema
Engl 593: Proseminar in the Teaching of Film
Engl/MACS 373: Magical Empire: The Disney Phenomenon from Aesthetic, Cultural, and Economic Perspectives
Engl 300: Writing Film Criticism
Engl 300: Transmedia Adaptations: From Written Word to Screen
Engl/MACS 273: American Cinema Since 1950
Engl/MACS 104: Introduction to Film
Highlighted Publications
Encyclopedia Entries
"Transnational and Diasporic Cinema." Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Journal Articles
"Benjamin Brodsky (1877-1960): The Transpacific American Film Entrepreneur -- Part One, Making A TRIP THRU CHINA." Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 18,no. 1, 2011, p. 58-94. Link to access via JStor.
"Benjamin Brodsky (1877-1960): The Trans-Pacific American Film Entrepreneur – Part Two, Taking A TRIP THRU CHINA to America." Journal of American - East Asian Relations, vol. 18, no. 2, 2011, p. 142-180. Journal website.
Book Contributions
"Making Connections: Benjamin Brodsky and Early Trans-Pacific Cinema Historiography." Chinese Cinema: Tracing the Origins (in Chinese), edited by Ain-ling Wong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2011, p. 94-109. Review.
"Bridging the Pacific with Love Eterne." China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, edited by Poshek Fu. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008, p. 174-198. Catalog link.
Reviews
Curry, Ramona. "Reviving the History, Revising the Historiography of Female Media Pioneers." Review of Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood; The Girl from God’s Country; Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema; It’s One O’Clock and Here Is Mary Margaret McBride; The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons. Journal of Women’s History, vol. 21, no. 3, 2009, p. 188-203. Journal website. journal website.
Books
Curry, Ramona. Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Press website.