Dr. Carl Freedman
James F. Cassidy Professor
Faculty Member in Comparative Literature
Faculty Member, Program in Film and Media Arts
Bachelor's Degree(s): 1975: B.A. in English, Oxford University 1973 1973: B.A. with Highest Honors in English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
PhD: 1983: Ph.D. in English, Yale University
Phone: (225) 578-7803
E-mail: CFREED2780@gmail.com
Office: 212D Allen
Area of Interest
Modern (especially Marxist) Critical Theory, Science Fiction, Film & Televison, Culture of US Electoral Politics
Awards & Honors
2012: Manship Summer Research Grant, Louisiana State University
2009: Regents Research Grant, Louisiana State University
2008: LSU Foundation Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award (one such award given annually)
2004: Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award (voted by the English Graduate Student Association,
Louisiana State University).
2003: Manship Summer Research Grant, Louisiana State University
2002: Excerpt from Critical Theory and Science Fiction chosen as featured text for
discussion at the Theory Roundtable of the International Conference on the Fantastic
in the Arts (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; March 2002)
2002: Regents Research Grant, Louisiana State University Critical
2001: Theory and Science Fiction named an Outstanding Academic Book of 2000 by Choice
1999: Pioneer Award for Excellence in Scholarship from the Science Fiction Research
Association (awarded for the best article in science-fiction criticism annually; winning
article: “Kubrick’s 2001 and the Possibility of a Science- Fiction Cinema”)
1994: Summer Faculty Research Stipend, Louisiana State University
1992: Manship Summer Research Grant, Louisiana State University
1989: Summer Faculty Research Stipend, Louisiana State University
1985: Summer Faculty Research Stipend, Louisiana State University
1984: Margaret Church Modern Fiction Studies Memorial Prize for best article to appear
in the journal during the year (winning article: "Antinomies of 1984”)
1983-1984: Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Wesleyan University.
Selected Publications
Authored Books:
Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema: Studies in Ford, Wilder, Coppola, Scorsese, and Others (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books and Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013). Order from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.con/Versions-Hollywood-Crime-Cinema-Scorsese/dp/1841507245
The Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2012). Order from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.con/Age-Nixon-Study-Cultural-Power/dp/1846949432%3fSubscriptioNId%3DAKIAIOJGEB6643FVTU7Q%26tag%3Dwwwobookscom-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D1846949432
The Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity, and the Politics of Culture
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).
Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Hanover, NH and London: Wesleyan University Press and University Press of New England, 2000). Named an Outstanding Academic Book of 2000 by Choice.
George Orwell: A Study In Ideology and Literary Form (New York and London: Garland, 1988).
Edited Books:
1. Conversations with Samuel R. Delany (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2009). Edited, with an introduction, other prefatory material, and one new interview.
2. Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
2008). Edited, with an introduction, other prefatory material, and one new interview.
3. Conversations with Isaac Asimov (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005).
Edited, with an introduction and other prefatory material.
Special Issues of Journals:
1. Special issue of PMLA on “Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium”
(May 2004) (co-coördinated with Marleen S. Barr).
2. Special issue of Science-Fiction Studies on Philip K. Dick (July 1988) (co-edited
with George Slusser).
Articles:
1. “Notes on Benjamin, Adorno, Mann, and the Cinema of Michael Haneke,” forthcoming
in Film International.
2. “Hobbes after Marx, Scorsese After Coppola: On GoodFellas,” Film International,
#49 (2011:1), pp. 42-62.
3.“The Supplement of Coppola: Primitive Accumulation and the Godfather Trilogy,” Film
International, #49 (2011:1), pp. 8-41. [This item and the preceding one form a special
section, “Gangsterism and Capitalism,” which also includes a brief introduction by
me and which constitutes most of the issue.]
4. “Marxism, Cinema, and Some Dialectics of Science Fiction and Film Noir,” in Red
Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, ed. Mark Bould and China Miéville (London: Pluto
Press, 2009), pp. 66-82.
5. “The End of Work: From Double Indemnity to Body Heat,” in Neo-Noir, ed. Mark Bould,
Kathrina Glitre, and Greg Tuck (London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2009), pp. 61-74.
6. “Marxism and Science Fiction,” in Reading Science Fiction, ed. James Gunn, Marleen
S. Barr, and Matthew Candelaria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 120-132.
7. “Post-Heterosexuality: John Wayne and the Construction of American Masculinity,”
Film International, #25 (2007:1), pp. 16-31.
8. “Speculative Fiction and International Law: The Marxism of
China Miéville,” Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 20, No. 3 (November 2006), pp. 25-39.
9. “About Delany Writing: An Anatomical Meditation,” Extrapolation, Summer 2006, pp.
16-29.
10. “An American Tragedy: On Oliver Stone’s Nixon,” Film International, #19 (2006:1),
pp. 14-23.
11. “To the Perdido Street Station: The Representation of Revolution in China Miéville’s
Iron Council,” Extrapolation, Summer 2005, pp. 235-248. Reprinted in New Boundaries
in Political Science Fiction, ed. Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 2008), pp. 259-271.
12. “Versions of the American Imperium in Three Westerns by John Ford,” Film International,
#18 (2005:6), pp. 14-25.
13. “Samuel Delany: A Biographical and Critical Overview,” in A Companion to Science
Fiction, ed. David Seed (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 398-407.
14. “Foreword” to re-issue of Samuel Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
(Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004) pp. xi-xiv.
15. “Polemical Afterword: Some Brief Reflections on Arnold Schwarzenegger and on Science
Fiction in Contemporary American Culture,” PMLA, May 2004, pp. 539-546.
16. “Towards a Marxist Urban Sublime: Reading China Miéville’s King Rat,” Extrapolation,
Winter 2003, pp. 395-408.
17. “Memories of Holden Caulfield—And of Miss Greenwood,” The Southern Review, Spring
2003, pp. 401-417. Reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed., Bloom’s
Modern Critical Interpretations: J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye— New Edition
(New York: Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2009), pp. 167-182.
18. “A Note on Marxism and Fantasy,” Historical Materialism, vol. 10:4 (2002), pp.
261-271.
19. “London as Science Fiction: A Note on Some Images from Johnson, Blake, Wordsworth,
Dickens, and Orwell,” Extrapolation, Fall 2002, pp. 251- 262.
20. “Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Reflections After the Snow-Leavis Controversy,”
Extrapolation, Fall 2001, pp. 207-217. Reprinted in Science Fiction and the Two Cultures:
Essays on Bridging the Gap Between the Sciences and the Humanities, ed. Gary Westfahl
and George Slusser (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), pp. 11-21.
21. “Science Fiction and Utopia: A Historico-Philosophical Overview,” in Learning
from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition and the Politics of Science Fiction and
Utopia, ed. Patrick Parrinder (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2000; and
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 72-97.
22. “Kubrick’s 2001 and the Possibility of a Science-Fiction Cinema,” Science- Fiction
Studies, July 1998, pp. 300-318 [winner of the Pioneer Award for Excellence in Scholarship
from the Science Fiction Research Association] [reprinted in Linda Pavlovski, ed.,
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism 112 (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale Group,
2002), pp. 251-261] [reprinted, in Russian translation, in Theory of Science-Fiction
Film, ed. Natalia Samutina, (Moscow: New Literary Observer Publishing House, 2006),
pp. 345-366].
23. “Remembering the Future: Science and Positivism from Isaac Asimov to Gregory Benford,”
Extrapolation, Summer 1998, pp. 128-138.
24. “The Case Against the Case Against Space--And a Case for Science Fiction,” Science-Fiction
Studies, March 1998, pp. 143-152.
25. “Rhetorical Hermeneutics, Huckleberry Finn, and Some Problems with Pragmatism,”
in Reconceptualizing American Literary/Cultural Studies, ed. William E. Cain, (New
York: Garland, 1996), pp. 111-121.
26. “Science Fiction and the Question of the Canon,” in Science Fiction and Market
Realities, ed. Gary Westfahl, George Slusser, and Eric Rabkin,
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 117-127. 27. “How to Do Things with
Milton: A Study in the Politics of Literary
Criticism,” in Critical Essays on John Milton, ed. Christopher Kendrick (New
York: G.K. Hall, 1995), pp. 19-44. 28. “Theory, the Canon and the Politics of Curricular
Reform: A Response to
Gerald Graff,” in Teaching the Conflicts: Gerald Graff, Curricular Reform, and the
Culture Wars, ed. William E. Cain (New York: Garland, 1994), pp.
53-66. 29. “Beyond the Dialect of the Tribe: James Joyce, Hugh MacDiarmid, and World
Language,” in Hugh MacDiarmid: Man and Poet, ed. Nancy K. Gish (Edinburgh and Orono,
Maine: Edinburgh University Press and the National Poetry Foundation, 1992), pp. 253-273.
30. “Style, Fiction, Science Fiction: The Case of Philip K. Dick,” in Styles of Creation:
Aesthetic Technique and the Creation of Fictional Worlds, ed. George Slusser and Eric
Rabkin (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992),
pp. 30-43. 31. “Louisiana Duce: Notes Toward a Systematic Analysis of Postmodern
Fascism in America,” Rethinking Marxism, Spring 1992, pp. 19-31. 32. “Forms of Labor
in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest,” PMLA, March 1991, pp.
209-221 [co-authored with Christopher Kendrick]. Reprinted in The Critical Response
to Dashiell Hammett, ed. Christopher Metress (Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1994), pp. 12-29. 33. “England as Ideology: From Upstairs Downstairs to
A Room with a View,”
Cultural Critique, Winter 1990-91, pp. 79-106. 34. “The Interventional Marxism of
Louis Althusser,” Rethinking Marxism, Fall-
Winter 1990, pp. 309-328. 35. “Power, Sexuality, and Race in All the King's Men,”
in Southern Literature
and Literary Theory, ed. Jefferson Humphries (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1990), pp. 127-141.
36. “History, Fiction, Film, Television, Myth: The Ideology of M*A*S*H,” The Southern
Review, Winter 1990, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 89-106.
37. “The Transformation Problem and Cultural Theory,” in Comparative Literature East
and West: Traditions and Trends, ed. Cornelia N. Moore and Raymond A. Moody (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1989), pp. 22-28. 38. “The Mandarin Marxism of Theodor
Adorno,” Rethinking Marxism, Winter
1988, pp. 85-111 [co-authored with Neil Lazarus][see also “Reply to Dan Kiamie and
Rita DeSalvo,” Rethinking Marxism, Fall 1989, pp. 167-169].
39. “Philip K. Dick and Criticism,” Science-Fiction Studies, July 1988, pp. 121- 130.
Reprinted in On Philip K. Dick, ed. R.D. Mullen, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Arthur
B.Evans, and Veronica Hollinger (Terre Haute & Greencastle: SF- TH Inc., 1992), pp.
145-153.
40. “Nietzsche and Ideology-Critique: A Note on Twilight of the Idols,” Rethinking
Marxism, Summer 1988, pp. 103-114.
41. “Science Fiction and Critical Theory,” Science-Fiction Studies, July 1987, pp.
180-200 [see also “Another Response to John Fekete,” Science-Fiction Studies, March
1989, pp. 116-117].
42. “Marxist Theory, Radical Pedagogy, and the Reification of Thought,” College English,
January 1987, pp. 70-82.
43. “Antinomies of Nineteen Eighty-four,” Modern Fiction Studies, Winter 1984, pp.
601-620 [winner of the Margaret Church MFS Memorial Prize]. Reprinted in Bernard Oldsey
and Joseph Browne, eds., Critical Essays on
George Orwell (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986), pp. 90-109. 44. “Possibilities of a Political
Aesthetic: The Case of Hugh MacDiarmid,” The
Minnesota Review, Fall 1984, pp. 41-57. 45. “Overdeterminations: On Black Marxism
in Britain,” Social Text, Winter
1983/84, pp. 142-150. 46. “Towards a Theory of Paranoia: The Science Fiction of Philip
K. Dick,”
Science-Fiction Studies, March 1984, pp. 15-24. Reprinted in On Philip K. Dick, ed.
R.D. Mullen, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Arthur B. Evans, and Veronica Hollinger (Terre
Haute & Greencastle: SF-TH Inc., 1992), pp. 111- 118. Also reprinted in Philip K.
Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations,
ed. Samuel J. Umland (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 7-17. 47. “Writing,
Ideology, and Politics: Orwell's ‘Politics and the English Language’
and English Composition,” College English, April 1981, pp. 327-340 [see also “Carl
Freedman Responds,” College English, April 1983, pp. 412-414].