Marguerite R. Waller

Professor
Ph.D., Yale University, Comparative Literature
Office: 2050 CHASS Interdisciplinary Building
Phone: (951) 827-7859
e-mail: marguerite.waller@ucr.edu


Marguerite R. Waller (B.A. Cornell University; M. Phil., Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Yale University) is professor of English and Women’s Studies at UC Riverside where she began teaching in l990. From 1974-1990, she was a member of the faculty of Amherst College in Amherst Massachusetts. Her main areas of interest are film and visual culture and women’s studies.

She brings to her research and teaching in both film/visual culture and women’s studies a commitment to comparative analysis and cross-cultural dialogue. Her first book, Petrarch’s Poetics and Literary History, located Petrarch’s vernacular poetry in relation to the poetics of allegory and mimesis that it challenges. Her recent publications include Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance, co-edited with Jennifer Rycenga (Routledge, l991), which details the work and thought of new feminisms evolving in militarized situations around the world. Authors include women activists and academics from “First,” “Second,” and “Third” world contexts. Her book Contemporary Perspectives on Federico Fellini, co-edited with Frank Burke (University of Toronto Press, 2002), examines the life work of the Italian director in relation to the contemporary critical discourses on subjectivity, gender, sexuality, representation, globalization, and mass media that his films so evocatively anticipate. She has also published articles on virtual reality, border feminism, activist video, Chicana performance art, Hungarian film, and the intertextuality of Dante and Italian film.

Recent Articles:

"Decolonizing the Screen: From Ladri di biciclette to Ladri di saponette" in Revisioning Italy: National  Identity and Global Culture .ed. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo, U of Minnesota P, 1997. (253-74)

“If  ‘Reality is the Best Metaphor,’ It Must be Virtual,” diacritics, Fall l997. (90-104) Reprinted in Addiction and Culture.  ed. Janet Brody and Marc Redfield. U of California P (forthcoming).

“Lina  Wertmüller” entry in the Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature, ed. Rinaldina Russell, Greenwood Press, l997. (354-55)

“New Media in Old Film Cans: Maurizio Nichetti’s Multi-media Cinema,”RLA,1998. (pp. 378-82)

"Making Art, Making Citizens: Las Comadres and Post-National Aesthetics,”co-authored with Aida Mancillas and Ruth Wallen in With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture.ed. Lisa Bloom, U of Minnesota P, 1999. (107-32)  Trans. into Japanese, 2001.

“Pocha or Porkchop?”: Introduction to and Interview with Laura Esparza” in Latinas on Stage: Practice and Theory. Ed Alicia Arrizon and Lisa Bloom, University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (248-59)

“Striptease: Nichetti’s Flight from the Phallus in Volere Volare” in La Lotta con Proteo, ed. Massimo Ciavolella, Florence, Italy , Cadmo,  2001  (pp. 499-512).

“Back to the Future: Dante and the Languages  of Post-war Italian Film,” in Dante, Cinema, and Television, ed. Amilcare Iannucci.  U of Toronto P. (forthcoming, 2002,  35 pp in manuscript).

“Global Feminism and the Aesthetics of the Academy,” in Estetica e differenze, ed. Paola Zaccaria  with a Preface by Emory Elliott.  Palomar Editrice (forthcoming, 25 pp  in manuscript) “A Sudden Flash: Ibolya Fekete’s Bolse vita,”  in Screening the Balkans: From East to West and West to East,, ed. Àine O’Healy (submitted).

Grants and Fellowships:

Dr. Waller received a Fulbright Professorship in Budapest, Hungary in 1993, and convened a resident research group, “Crossing Feminisms: Using Difference” at the University of California Humanities Research Institute in l999.  In the spring quarter of 2002 she is a scholar in residence at the Center for Ideas and Society at U.C.R. 

Conference Organizing 

Dr. Waller has served as co-organizer of two major international conferences held at U.C. Riverside.  The first, Frontline Feminisms:Women, War, and Resistance,” co-organized with Dr. Piya Chatterjee in January, 1997 , brought  together activists and academics from 27 countries to discuss new  feminisms evolving in militarized situations around the world.  The second,  Sexualities and Knowledges, co-organized with Dr. Alicia Arrizon in February, 2002, brought activists and academics together  to develop an understanding of how knowledge  and sexuality are imbricated in the West and how sexualities and knowledges  change aspect  as we  engage in cross-cultural  dialogue.

Teaching:  

Dr. Waller teaches courses in the  Departments of English and Women’s Studies and in the Film and Visual Culture Program.  Her teaching areas include  postcolonial film,  gender and science fiction, gender and science, Renaissance “revolutions”,  and comparative contemporary  feminist  discourses.

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