Susan Barber


Title: Associate Professor Area of Specialization: Film Studies Phone: 310-338-2985 E-mail: sbarber@lmu.edu Susan Torrey Barber is an Associate Professor in the School of Film and Television, and has been teaching at LMU for 12 years. She received her doctorate at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinema-Television. Professor Barber is a film historian with areas of expertise in Australian, British, European and American film, including melodrama and the western. She is currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press on Australian Cinema, l970-present, and has received several university grants to study in Australia. Her essay on a contemporary Australian film, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, recently appeared in the journal Film Quarterly. Professor Barber also wrote a chapter on the films of Stephen Frears in Fires were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism (Lester Friedman, Editor, University Minnesota Press). Professor Barber has given several papers at national film conferences, including the Society for Film Studies and Annual Film and LIterature Conference (Florida State University). Topics include the films of Australian writer/director Jane Campion--"Australia's Dark Secrets in Sweetie, " and the American Western--"Women in the Wild West: Body Politics in Unforgiven and The Ballad of LIttle Jo." For several years, she has been the keynote speaker for California Women in HIgher Education at LMU. Public addresses include the following: "Revisiting Thelma and Louise," "Muriel's Wedding; An Australian Eccentric," and "Sexual Politics in The Full Monty."