Turns out Dr. John Bruns, Department of English, is serious about comedy. In addition to teaching courses on film, John directs the Film Studies Program. He explains his research interests:
My areas of research are comedy, narrative theory, and film—specifically narrative cinema and film theory. Since arriving at the College of Charleston in the fall of 2004, I have published a book and several articles. “Get out of Gaol Free, or: How to Read a Comic Plot,” appeared in Journal of Narrative Theory (Winter 2005. 35:1. 25-59). “Baffling Doom: Dialogue, Laughter, and Comic Perception in Henry James,” appeared in Texas Studies in Literature and Language (Spring 2005. 47:1. 1-30). The third, “Polyphonic Film,” which was written in the summer of 2006 underwent extensive revisions in the summer and fall of 2007, appeared in New Review of Film & Television Studies(August 2008. 6:2. 189-212.). “The Map is Not the Country: Cartography in Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men” appeared in Film Criticism(Winter 2011. 36:2. 2-21). In April of 2009, I published Loopholes: Reading Comically with Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey. For a quick look at some blurbs from the book’s back cover, click here.
John is currently working on a project entitled “People, Places, and Things: Navigating the Hitchcock Landscape”. He has also begun work on a book on the films of Steven Spielberg.
To learn more about Dr. John Bruns and read his CofC faculty spotlight, click here.