Dr. Scott Combs
Associate Professor
B.A., The University of Chicago, Cinema and Media Studies
M.A, University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric and Film
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric and Film
Research Focus: Rhetoric and Film
Scott Combs began teaching at St. John’s in the fall of 2007. He received his B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies with Honors from the University of Chicago in 1998, and his M.A. (2001) and Ph.D. (2006) from the University of California, Berkeley. In the year prior to joining the St. John’s faculty, Professor Combs taught at Berkeley and Stanford University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on international film history, American film genres (noir, melodrama, horror), adaptation, theory and history of mediation and embodiment, and performance theory. He has published articles on early film and the body, sound technology, and classism in dominant cinema. His book _Deathwatch: American Film, Technology, and the End of Life_ traces the majors ways that the movie camera has been used to grapple with the death “moment,” starting with early Edison shorts and concluding with late-twentieth century films. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/deathwatch/9780231163477
He is currently working on a book-length project that examines circus and cinema as overlapping and contrasting venues for acrobatic performance. Professor Combs is also a professional trapeze artist and directs pieces of circus theater in New York City.
New publications, the book Deathwatch is out now, published 2014.
He is also a published poet under the pseudonym Harlan Mackey!