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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.

Dahlia smiles critically

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.

Dahlia the author

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

Hey Guys, Carpe That Fucking Diem Already

Want to know what's wrong with dating in LA? Well, here's one of the things that's wrong with dating in LA -- and I think it's a guy thing. In the last couple days, one guy told me that I was intimidating. And another guy told me that, while he thinks I'm totally great, he doesn't want to go on a date with me because he's concerned he wouldn't be "fully present." And as you saw in my latest OKCupid update, another guy told me I was a handful. Let me rock your world for a second. You know...

Can You Be Friends (with Benefits)?

One of my readers wrote in recently with this query: What's your stance on friend's with benefits? Yay or nay? I've done it twice in my late 20s and ended up getting emotionally attached after doing the deed. This led to heartache (on my part) and the end of the friendship. I should know better now that I'm in my mid-30s, right? I have a itch to scratch and it's been a REALLY long time (we are talking over a few years here). I'm too scared to have a one-night stand and I don't want to get...

New Year, New You: Just Own It

It’s not that I don’t like resolutions. I think resolutions are great. I make them on a regular basis. I’m all about self-improvement and transformation, recognizing your faults and actively working to change them. What I’ve never been a fan of are New Year’s Resolutions. First of all, I don’t understand why you should wait until January 1st to change something. If it bugs you on November 12th, start then. Also, this whole idea of imposing a laundry list of demands and expectations on...