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
Tom of Finland and the Politics of Sex(uality)
Tom of Finland, Untitled, 1962, ToFF Cat. #62.27, Collection of Volker Morlock, © 1962 Tom of Finland Foundation There is a scene in Dallas Buyers Club where Matthew McConaughey’s character goes into a gay bar to conduct some business. As he’s standing in the bar, the camera pans around, and I’m pretty sure I saw a Tom of Finland image on the wall. It might not have been an actual Tom of Finland image, but it was definitely inspired by Tom of Finland, at the very least. And that’s part of...
Why Self-Publishing is Awesome (and Why Full-Time Writing Doesn’t Work)
I just read this article advocating self-publishing, "Why Writers Must Self-Publish Their Books," and I have to say that I agree with several points. The most cheerful one is that self-publishing is liberating. You can publish what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Considering the glacial pace of traditional publishing, and the growing impossibility of getting anything published -- no matter how stellar or genius or impressive -- the freedom to get your work out there is not only...
Miss Longsuffering, Mr. Douchebag, and the Tale We’ve Heard a Million Times Before
I recently received an email from a reader sharing the story of the worst breakup of her life. Her story was long, complex, and painful, but several aspects of her story resonated with me, and I would imagine with many women, so I'm sharing them below. “…I was very happy with this guy. He made me laugh, he behaved like a gentleman. He had a good job, a decent vehicle, and seemed to give a damn about my feelings. Fast forward to our fifth year. Things had degraded on his end. While I was doing...