James Naremore

James O. Naremore, a film, English, and literature scholar, is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and the Media School  at Indiana University Bloomington.[1] Naremore is best known for his writings on film history, genre, and theory, and for his studies of film noir and directors Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Vincente Minnelli, Charles Burnett, and Pedro Costa.[2]

Academic career

Naremore began teaching at Indiana University in 1970 as an assistant professor of English, and was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and professor in 1977.[3] He served multiple terms as Director of Film Studies between 1976 and 1994, and in 1994 was appointed Chancellor’s Professor.[4] He has also held visiting and guest professorships at the University of Hamburg (1980–81), the University of Chicago (2001, 2007, 2012), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010), and the University of California, Los Angeles (2013).[5]

Honors and awards

Naremore has received numerous awards for scholarship and teaching. Early recognitions include the Lilly Open Fellowship (1983–84), Indiana University Summer Faculty Fellowships (1976, 1982, 1986, 1994), and the Albert Markham Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin (1972–73).[1] In 2000, his book More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts won the International Kraszna-Krausz Moving-Image Book Award[6] and a commendation from the Society for Cinema Studies’ Kovács Book Prize.[7] In 2007, On Kubrick was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving-Image Book Award.[4] He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1995–96)[8], an Alisa Mellon Bruce Senior Research Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (1994–95)[9], and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship (1977).[10] Additional distinctions include the Jim Welsh Award for Excellence in Adaptation Studies (2017)[1], the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholars Award (2014)[11], the Tracy M. Sonneborn Prize for Distinguished Teaching and Research, and multiple teaching excellence awards at Indiana University.[2]

Research and scholarship

Naremore’s early writings were centered on modern British literature. He is the author of The World Without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel (1973)[12] and essays on James Joyce, the imagist poets, and Philip Larkin.

Soon, however, he devoted his career exclusively to writings about film. He is the author of The Filmguide to Psycho (1973)[13], Acting in the Cinema (1988)[14], An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema (2014)[15], and Some Versions of Cary Grant (2022).[16] He also wrote short “BFI Film Classics” volumes on the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success (2010)[17] and the 1948 film Letter from and Unknown Woman (2021).[18] Both On Kubrick and The Magic World of Orson Welles were issued in revised and expanded editions (2023 and 2015 respectively).[19] His award-winning More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts was also expanded in a later edition to include chapters that explore the evolution of film noir into the twenty-first century and its enduring cultural impact, examining noir as a critical concept, stylistic category, and source of creative influence across media and eras.[20] In his 2019 Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction, Naremore traces the origin of the term film noir from French literary and critical discourse to its broad international application, offering analysis on how noir has been shaped by modernism, censorship, stylistic variation, and contemporary media environments.[21]

In, 2025, Naremore was the subject of a book-length interview, Cinema Then and Now, conducted by Craig S. Simpson. This book covers his life, teaching, publications, and ideas about a wide range of topics among them criticism, TV streaming, genre, adaptation, collaboration, and film preservation. [22]In that same year, he and Darlene J. Sadlier were co-authors of The Haunted Cinema of Pedro Costa.[23]

Bibliography

  • The World Without a Self: Virginia Woolf and the Novel. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 1973. ISBN 978-0-300-01594-2. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Filmguide to Psycho. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. 1973. ISBN 978-0-253-39307-4. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Acting in the Cinema. Berkeley Los Angeles London: Univ. of California Press. 1988. ISBN 978-0-520-91066-9. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Modernity and Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. 1997. ISBN 0-253-20627-8. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • The Films of Vincente Minnelli. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1993. ISBN 0-521-38770-1. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley Los Angeles London: Univ. of California Press. 1998. ISBN 0-520-21294-0. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Film Adaptation. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-8135-2813-7. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Sweet Smell of Success. Camden: Palgrave Macmillan. 2010. ISBN 978-1-84457-288-5.
  • An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema. Berkeley Los Angeles London: Univ. of California Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-520-27973-5. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Charles Burnett: A Cinema of Symbolic Knowledge. Berkeley Los Angeles London: Univ. of California Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-520-28553-8. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • On Kubrick. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Academic. 2007. ISBN 978-1-84457-142-0. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • The Magic of Orson Welles. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: Univ. of Illinois Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0-252-08131-6. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. 2019. ISBN 978-0-19-879174-4. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Letter From an Unknown Woman. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Academic. 2019. ISBN 978-1-83902-234-0. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Some Versions of Cary Grant. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. 2022. ISBN 978-0-19-756638-1. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  • Cinema Then and Now. New York: Sticking Place Books. 2025. ISBN 979-8-89976-001-3.
  • The Haunted Cinema of Pedro Costa. Indiana University Press. 2025. ISBN 9780253073242.

References

  1. ^ a b c "James Naremore". Department of Comparative Literature. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  2. ^ a b "Emeriti Faculty – James O. Naremore". Indiana University Bloomington. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
  3. ^ "Interview with James Naremore – Senses of Cinema". 2001-12-29. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  4. ^ a b "Falling For You: Essays on Cinema and Performance – Screening the Past". 2014-12-22. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  5. ^ "An interview with film historian and critic James Naremore". World Socialist Web Site. 2015-09-02. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  6. ^ "Past Moving Image winners". Kraszna-Krausz. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  7. ^ "Kovács Book Award | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing". LibraryThing.com. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  8. ^ "Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists". www.gf.org. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  9. ^ "Senior Fellows | National Gallery of Art". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  10. ^ "Upon retirement, new work begins for Media School professors". The Media School. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  11. ^ "JAMES NAREMORE TO PRESENT ACADEMY FILM SCHOLARS BOOK ON ACCLAIMED FILMMAKER CHARLES BURNETT | Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences". www.oscars.org. 2017-08-23. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  12. ^ Naremore, James (1973). The world without a self: Virginia Woolf and the novel. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-01594-2.
  13. ^ Naremore, James (1973). Filmguide to Psycho. Indiana University Press filmguide series. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-39308-1.
  14. ^ Naremore, James (1988). Acting in the Cinema. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06228-3.
  15. ^ Naremore, James (2014-01-10). An Invention Without a Future: Essays on Cinema. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-27974-2.
  16. ^ Naremore, James (2022). Some versions of Cary Grant. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-756638-1.
  17. ^ Naremore, James (2010). Sweet smell of success. BFI film classics. British Film Institute. New York: Palgrave Macmillan on behalf of the British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-84457-288-5.
  18. ^ Naremore, James (2021). Letter from an unknown woman. BFI film classics. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-83902-236-4.
  19. ^ Naremore, James (1989). The magic world of Orson Welles. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. ISBN 978-0-87074-299-6.
  20. ^ Gunning, Tom (1999). "More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (review)". Modernism/modernity. 6 (3): 151–153. ISSN 1080-6601.
  21. ^ Naremore, James (2019-02-15). Film Noir: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-250951-2.
  22. ^ Wolverton, Andy (2025-08-22). "Book Review: Cinema Then and Now: James Naremore: Conversations with Craig S. Simpson". Journeys in Darkness and Light. Retrieved 2026-03-05.
  23. ^ Lash, Dominic (2026-01-02). "The Haunted Cinema of Pedro Costa: JAMES NAREMORE and DARLENE J. SADLIER, 2025, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, pp. x + 207, illus., $70.00 (cloth), $30.00 (paperback)". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 46 (1): 247–249. doi:10.1080/01439685.2025.2605802. ISSN 0143-9685.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.