David Desser

Professor of Cinema Studies

Professor of Comparative Literature

Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Professor of Criticism and Interpretive Theory

Research Professor of Communications

desser@uiuc.edu

Primary areas of interest: Asian cinema, American cinema, race and ethnicity in cinema.


Dr. Desser is the Director of the Unit for Cinema Studies at UIUC. He is editor of the National Film Traditions series, published by Cambridge University Press and is past editor of the Cinema Journal. Desser has taught History of World Cinema; Japanese Cinema; Chinese Cinema; The Jewish Experience in Cinema; Film genres (including Western, War, Melodrama, Science Fiction, Horror). Among his more recent publications are The Cinema of Hong Kong : History, Arts, Identity, co-edited with Poshek Fu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Hollywood Goes Shopping, co-edited with Garth S. Jowett (University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and a volume he edited called, Ozu's TOKYO STORY (Cambridge University Press, 1997).