University Park, Pa. -- Stephen Prince, a leading film scholar, will present the spring 2009 Robert M. Pockrass Memorial Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 16, in Foster Auditorium of Pattee Library at Penn State's University Park campus.
His free public lecture, titled “American Film in the Age of Terrorism,” is sponsored by the College of Communications and University Libraries.
Prince is professor of communication at Virginia Tech. His research and publications focus on violence in motion pictures, on Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and Japanese cinema, on the American film industry, on American film during the 1980s, and on political cinema. He is the author or editor of 15 books, and has published more than two dozen journal articles and book chapters. His latest book is “Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism” (2009, Columbia University Press).
His audio commentaries have appeared on the DVDs of films by directors Akira Kurosawa and Sam Peckinpah, including “Ran,” “Seven Samurai” and “Straw Dogs.” He is a past president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the world's largest organization of film scholars, academics, students and professionals.
The Pockrass Lecture was named after the late Professor Robert M. Pockrass, a member of Penn State's journalism faculty from 1948 to 1977. Pockrass, who specialized in public opinion and popular culture, served as the graduate officer and taught radio news writing for the School of Journalism, which later became the College of Communications.