About Dahlia
DAHLIA SCHWEITZER is a pop culture critic, writer, and professor. Described by Vogue as “sexy, rebellious, and cool,” Schweitzer writes about film, television, music, gender, identity, and everything in between. She studied at Wesleyan University, lived and worked in New York City and Berlin, and completed her MA and PhD at the Art Center College of Design and UCLA. She is currently chair of the Film and Media department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.
In addition to her books, Dahlia has essays in publications including Cinema Journal, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Hyperallergic, Jump Cut, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and The Journal of Popular Culture. She has also released several albums of electronic music, including Plastique and Original Pickup.
Professor
As a professor of film and media studies, Dahlia exposes her students to a variety of theoretical approaches and cinematic techniques, asking them to approach both with analytical inquisitiveness. Her aim is to pass her own curiosity on to her students, encouraging them to think across their classes and experiences to create intellectual connections between course materials and the world in which they live. She strives to remind her students that the loudest voice is not necessarily correct, and in so doing, helps them find their own.
Media Critic
Declared “one of the world’s leading analysts of popular culture” by renowned author Toby Miller, Dahlia writes about film, television, music, gender, identity, and everything in between. Her work can be found across mainstream, academic, and emergent channels in both long and short form. Repeatedly drawn to popular culture, Dahlia loves to analyze and unpack cultural artifacts in order to explore how they reflect social and historical issues, as well as looking at how they reinforce or interrogate common cultural assumptions.
Author
Dahlia has written numerous books exploring aspects of film and television. Regardless of the topic—serial killers, private detectives, or even zombies—all of her writing engages directly with questions of self versus other, private versus public space, examining depictions of gender, identity, and race. She traces how these depictions evolve and examines what they mean about our changing world. In her latest project, Dahlia explores the ways haunted homes have become a venue for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse.
Books
Cindy Sherman’s
Office Killer
Going
Viral
L.A.
Private Eyes
Haunted
Homes
Blog
Enough About Harvey
Confession: I am sick of hearing about Harvey Weinstein. It's not that I support the perpetual harassment and objectification of women, it's just that the selective focus of the whole situation makes me want to scream. Why Harvey? Why now? After all, our commander-in-chief did many similar things, and not only did no one care, but he was voted into office! And yet people seem to be stabbing Harvey with metaphorical pitchforks, over and over, with the kind of glee that can only come...
#MeToo, of course
I've been telling myself over the last few days that I need to write a blog. As the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment/assault/rape scandal appears to rock Los Angeles, as well as (perhaps) the rest of the United States, and woman after woman steps forward to share her own experiences with harassment/assault/rape, my silence frustrates me. But, at the same time, I feel like I'm exhausted just thinking about prior experiences. I don't need to see all my female friends step forward with their...
Taylor Swift as Unruly Woman
I'm not a "Swiftie." There is an occasional Taylor Swift song that I won't move past if it's on the radio, but I was hardly inconvenienced by the absence of her music on Spotify. That said, I feel compelled to speak up in defense of "Look What You Made Me Do." Her latest release, from what I've read, has met with a lot of derision. Some critics are bored by the mediocre rhyme and repetition, others are angered by the persistent "privileged white woman victim" role that Taylor keeps playing....