Orson Welles in Focus : Texts and Contexts

Through his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles’s multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles’s work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles’s work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totality illuminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.

Catherine L. Benamou is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Chicano-Latino Studies, and Visual Studies at the University of California-Irvine. She is author of It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey and was Associate Producer and Senior Researcher for the film, It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles.

James N. Gilmore is Associate Instructor in the Media School at Indiana University. He is co-editor of Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital.

Sidney Gottlieb is Professor of Media Studies at Sacred Heart University. His recent publications include volume 20 of the Hitchcock Annual, which he coedits with Richard Allen, and the second volume of Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews.

Vincent Longo is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He has used his research in the international Welles archives as the basis for conference presentations on Welles's multimedia theater and his drawings, paintings, and doodles. He was also the dramaturge for a live multimedia staging of Too Much Johnson, which appeared at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2015.

James Naremore is Emeritus Chancellors' Professor at Indiana University. He is the author of several books on film, among them The Magic World of Orson Welles.

Marguerite Rippy is Chair of the Department of Literature and Languages at Marymount University. She is the author of Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective and co-author of Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffirelli: Great Shakespeareans.

Craig Simpson is the Lilly Library Manuscripts Archivist. He curated the Lilly's exhibition, 100 Years of Orson Welles: Master of Stage, Sound, and Screen.

Matthew Solomon is Associate Professor in the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is author of Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century and editor of Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Melies's Trip to the Moon.

François Thomas is Professor of Film studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. He coauthored the books Citizen Kane and Orson Welles at Work with Jean-Pierre Berthomé.

Shawn VanCour is Assistant Professor of Media Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Making Radio: Early Radio Production and the Rise of Modern Sound Culture.

James N. Gilmore is Associate Instructor in the Media School at Indiana University. He is editor (with Matthias Stork) of Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital.

Sidney Gottlieb is Professor of Media Studies at Sacred Heart University. He is the editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews and (with Richard Allen) the Hitchcock Annual.

James N. Gilmore is Associate Instructor in the Media School at Indiana University. He is editor (with Matthias Stork) of Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital.

Sidney Gottlieb is Professor of Media Studies at Sacred Heart University. He is the editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews and (with Richard Allen) the Hitchcock Annual.