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Will Scheibel

Will Scheibel

Will Scheibel

Professor and Chair

CONTACT

English
401B Hall of Languages
Email: lscheibe@syr.edu
Office: 315.443.4950

Degrees

Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington

CV

Social/Academic Links

Courses

Undergraduate Courses

ENG-154 Interpretation of Film

ENG-170 American Cinema, Beginnings to Present

Biographic Overview

I'm Professor of Film and Screen Studies in the Department of English and Chair of the department. A specialist in U.S. film history, I am primarily interested in stardom and performance, genres and modes of popular storytelling (horror, film noir, melodrama), and Classical Hollywood cinema. One of my central research questions asks, how do legendary Hollywood figures (filmmakers, stars, proprietary characters) achieve legibility as classic-film icons?

​Currently, I am writing a book under contract with Wayne State University Press about the Universal Classic Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Wolf Man, etc.). Exploring the impact of film circulation and paratextual material on the creation of a canon, this project undertakes a kind of monster-hunt across time: from the studio period, when the serialization of horror films made Universal Pictures synonymous with the genre, to the franchise era, when the Universal monsters gained afterlives as brand ambassadors for a media conglomerate. The book is tentatively titled Monsters in the Movie Lab: Universal Pictures and Classic Hollywood Horror.

I am also a regular contributor to Film Obsessive, and my articles are available to read here: https://filmobsessive.com/author/will-scheibel/.

Books
Research Interests

Film and Screen Studies

Research Specializations

Popular cinema, media, and culture from the United States; genres and modes of screen-based narrative (film noir, horror, melodrama); stardom and acting; director styles and reputations; gender studies; modernism and modernity.

Honors and Awards

Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship, Syracuse University, Spring 2021.