John Bruns
Professor, Film Studies
Office Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:00-5:00pm, and by appointment (Zoom optional)
Phone: 843.953.4957
E-mail: brunsj@cofc.edu
John Bruns is Professor of Film Studies and is also a faculty affiliate of the Women's and Gender Studies Program. John's first book, Loopholes: Reading Comically (Routledge, 2013), is currently out in paperback with a new introduction. The book takes classic and contemporary theories of comedy and applies them to a variety of topics in film, literature and culture. Andrew McConnell Stott (University of Buffalo, SUNY) calls it "the essential next step in the discussion and a must for humor scholars everywhere." He recently published a book on Alfred Hitchcock, entitled Hitchcock's People, Places, and Things (Northwestern University Press). He has also co-authored with Charles Ramírez Berg a film history textbook to be published by University of Texas Press as part of its Texas Film and Media Studies Series (ed. Thomas Schatz), entitled Essential Film History: The Evolution of Movie Storytelling (Spring 2025).
Education
2002 - Ph.D., Film, Literature & Culture, the Department of English and the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
1996 - M.A., English, University of Southern California
1992 - B.A., Film, Television & Theater/English, University of Notre Dame
Research Interests
- Film history, theory, criticism
- Cultural studies
- Literary theory
- Comedy
- Feminist theory
Courses Taught
ENGL 110: Introduction to Academic Writing
ENGL 212: The Cinema: History and Criticism
ENGL 351: Studies in American Film (Hollywood Genres)
ENGL 370: Literary Genres: The Melodrama (co-taught with Dr. Tim Carens)
ENGL 390: Special Topics in Film - Alfred Hitchcock
ENGL 390: Special Topics in Film - Global City Cinema
ENGL 390: Special Topics in Film - American Cinema of the 1970s
ENGL 399: Tutorial
ENGL 404: Independent Study
ENGL 490: Senior Seminar in Film
ENGL 499: Bachelor's Essay
ENGL 560: Film Studies
HONS 391: Culture and Technology, 1869-1936
Publications
"Hitchcock's Sinking Feeling: Gravity and Disequilibrium in Rebecca." Hitchcock Annual, Vol. 26, Columbia University Press, 2023, pp. 77-100.
"The Dark Comedy Side of Genius." Review essay. Hitchcock Annual, Vol. 24, Columbia University Press, 2021, pp. 80-105.
"Under Capricorn: Head, Shoulder, Knees, and Toes." Under Capricorn: 70 Years On. Conference Proceedings, Sep. 5-6, 2019, King's College, London, edited by Stéphane Duckett and Charles Barr, Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, Universities of Warwick, Reading, and Oxford, 2021.
Hitchcock's People, Places, and Things. Northwestern University Press, 2019. (click here to read a book review by Carrie Rickey, Film Quarterly, Winter 2019)
(with Amy Monaghan) "Instructor's Resource Manual." The Film Experience: An Introduction, 5th edition, by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White. Bedford/St.Martin's, 2018.
"Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success." Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances, Vol. 1: America, edited by Murray Pomerance and Kyle Stevens. Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 124-134.
"Teaching Inception." The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Cinema Studies 9, edited by Tracy Cox-Stanton. Winter, 2015.
"'The Proper Geography': Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 'The Birds.'" Hitchcock and Adaptation: On the Page and Screen, edited by Mark Osteen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Loopholes: Reading Comically. With a New Introduction by the Author. Routledge, 2013.
"Hitchcock's Newspaper: a Thing in the Crowd." Hitchcock Annual, Vol. 18, Columbia University Press, 2013, pp. 72-106.
"'The Proper Geography': Hitchcock's Adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 'The Birds.'" Clues: A Journal of Detection, vol. 33, no. 1, 2013, pp. 57-66.
"The Map is Not the Country: Cartography in Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men." Film Criticism, vol. 36, no. 2, 2011, pp. 1-20.
"The Polyphonic Film." New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, pp. 189-212.
"Baffling Doom: Dialogue, Laughter, and Comic Perception in Henry James." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 47, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-30.
"Get Out of Gaol Free, Or: How to Read A Comic Plot." Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 35, no. 1, 2005, pp. 25-59.