A native of Long Island, New York, I have been teaching film history and criticism at Emory since 1989. My most recent book is Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and TV, which was a finalist for the Theatre Library Association’s 2010 Richard Wall Memorial Award, which recognizes books of “exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded performance,” and was also named a 2009 “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine. I have also written a biography of the classical Hollywood era producer Walter Wanger, edited anthologies on film censorship and Michael Moore, and co-edited anthologies on Orientalism and John Ford’s sound westerns.
My current research project (being co-authored with Professor Dana F. White of the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory) is “Segregated Cinema in a Southern City: Atlanta, 1895-1973” (to be published by the University of Georgia Press), an account of movie culture (exhibition, censorship, reception) in the segregated era.
My teaching interests range from film and media criticism through Western European cinemas, Japanese Cinema, documentary film and the history (business and stylistic) of Hollywood.
In Atlanta itself, I have served as host and moderator of The Cinema Club since Fall 1998. For 2011-2012 I am serving as co-chair of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
Education
- BA, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980.
- MFA, Columbia University, 1982.
- PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987.
Interests
- American and international film history
- film criticism
- research methods
Achievements
My most recent book is Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and TV, which was a finalist for the Theatre Library Association’s 2010 Richard Wall Memorial Award, which recognizes books of “exceptional scholarship in the field of recorded performance,” and was also named a 2009 “Outstanding Academic Title” by Choice magazine.
IMAGE (Independent Media Artists of Georgia, Etc.) Award, Atlanta, GA, 2008.
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Award, American Jewish Committee, Atlanta, GA, 2006.
2005 Katherine Singer Kovacs Essay Award from The Society for Cinema and Media Studies for outstanding scholarship in film and media studies for "Oscar Micheaux and Leo Frank: Cinematic Justice Across the Color Line," Film Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 2004): 8-21.
Senior Fellowship, Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, 2002-2003.
Franklin M. Garrett Prize for Best Essay on Atlanta and Georgia History, 1998-1999, Atlanta History Center, for “Selznick's March: Gone With the Wind Comes to White Atlanta," Atlanta History 43, no. 2 (Summer 1999), 7-33.
7 major Emory University Research Grants (1990-2009).
National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, July 1997-June 2000 (with Dana F. White).
National Endowment for the Humanities Independent Scholar Research Fellowship, 1989.
Associations
Publications & Presentations
Books:
Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television
(University of Georgia Press, 2009) Buy this book.
Prof. Bernstein talks about The People vs Leo Frank
Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent
(University of Minnesota Press, 2000; University of California Press, 1994) Buy this book.
Editor, Michael Moore: Filmmaker, Newsmaker, Cultural Icon (University of Michigan Press, 2010) Buy this book.
Co-Editor (with Gaylyn Studlar), John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era
(Indiana University Press, 2001) Buy this book.
Editor, Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era
(Rutgers University Press, 2000) Buy this book.
Co-Editor (with Gaylyn Studlar), Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film
(Rutgers University Press, 1997) Buy this book.
Other Recent Publications:
“The Producer as Auteur,” in Barry K. Grant, Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader (New York: Blackwell’s, 2008), 180-189.
“Imitation of Life (1934) in a Segregated Atlanta: its Promotion, Distribution and Reception,” co-authored with Dana F. White, Film History 19, no. 2 (2007): 152-178.
“They Won’t Forget: Trying to Tell the Truth and Nothing but the Truth,” The Oxford American, no. 56 (2007): 76-79.
“John Huston’s Wise Blood,” in 20th Century American Fiction on Film, ed. R. Barton Palmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 144-169, March 2007.
“Stagecoach (1939),” in Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky, eds. (New York: Norton, 2005), 318-338.
"Oscar Micheaux and Leo Frank: Cinematic Justice Across the Color Line," Film Quarterly 57, No. 4 (Summer 2004): 8-21.
"Perfecting the New Gangster: Writing Bonnie and Clyde," Film Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2000), 16-31.
"High and Low: Art Cinema and Pulp Fiction in Yokohama Harbor," in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation, Rutgers University Press (2000), 172-189.
Co-editor with Dana F. White, "Movie-going Metropolis," Special Issue of Atlanta History 43, no. 2 (Summer 1999).
"Model Criminals: Visual Style in Bonnie and Clyde," in Lester D. Friedman (ed.), Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Cambridge University Press (1999), 101-126.
"Selznick's March: Gone With the Wind Comes to White Atlanta," Atlanta History 43, no. 2 (Summer 1999), 7-33. Winner of the Franklin M. Garrett Prize for Best Essay on Atlanta and Georgia History, 1998-1999.
"'Floating Triumphantly': The American Critics on Titanic," in Kevin Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (eds.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, Rutgers University Press (1999), 14-28.