Robert A Rushing

Much of my work combines critical theory, genre and popular culture as a transnational phenomenon. I continue to work on biopolitics and cinema, that is, the study of how biopolitical interventions are mediated by the media. Cinema and television mediate state and private initiatives to control and manage life, health and vitality -- and those initiatives are in turn informed by the narratives from film and television, a combination that I call "biopolitical fantasy." I am also (always) at work on Calvino, the senses and the body, part of a continuing interest in phenomenological approaches to literature and film. I am particularly interested in how Calvino, the most “cerebral” of Italian writers, invariably thinks through his abstract and geometrical scenarios through a body that is sexed, desiring, and fully immersed in the senses.