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Faculty Profiles

Michael Frank
mfrank@bentley.edu
AAC 097
781/891-2948
Associate Professor of English

PhD, Cornell University, 1972
Research Interests:

Literary Theory

Cinema Studies

Bible & Literature

Narrative Theory

Cultural Studies

Humanities Theory/Principles of Education
Teaching Interests:

Cinema Studies [Alfred Hitchcock]

Liteary & Cultural Analysis

Writing

Literature & the Arts [Music]
Michael Frank
Selected Publications and presentations:

Book chapters
Frank, Mike. "The Radical Monism of Alfred Hitchcock," in The Changing Face of Evil in Film and Television, Editions Rodopi , Amsterdam, 2006

Conference papers
Frank, Mike. "The Ontology of the Pornographic Image," in The Nordic Association for Comparative Literature (NorLit) International Conference, August 2009.

Frank, Mike. "Why the Humanities Are Not Progressive," in Third International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, July 2008.

Professional Memberships:
Modern Language Association
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Society for the Study of Narrative Literature

Honors and Awards:
2003, Bentley Innovation in Teaching Award

1991, Bentley Innovation in Teaching Award

1987, Visiting Scholar; Visual Studies; Harvard University

Scholarly Work in Progress:
Torah and Tragedy.
A close textual examination of the creation story in the biblical book of Genesis, aiming to see to what extent what we have come to call "the tragic sense of life" is already embedded there.

Two Shots of Alfred Hitchcock: On "Pure Cinema" and Cultural Meanings.
An attempt to reconcile a purely formalist view of cinema with a larger view which sees films as culturally and ideologically resonant.

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Primary interests include cinema, literary criticism and theory, narrative theory and modernism and post-modernism. Major research field: the films of Alfred Hitchcock and their relationship to cinematic practices and cultural history. Also work on narrative strategies in the Pentateuch and the history of interpretion. Recipient of two Bentley College Teaching Innovation Awards, for work on the college's Cinema Studies Program, and for establishing the Bentley College/Boston Symphony concert series. Has taught at University of Tel Aviv, Williams College, University of Chicago and Oberlin College. Former Fulbright Scholar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.