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
Why I Love Mindy Kaling
I'll be honest. I didn't actively seek out Mindy Kaling. Hulu kept suggesting that I watch The Mindy Project after episodes of New Girl finished, so I finally agreed. I watched one, and then I decided to go back to the beginning because I'm OCD like that. I watched every single episode and never missed another one. I got Mindy's book, and I officially became a Mindy fan. I watch a lot of TV, but my affection and appreciation for Mindy transcends my feelings for Jess, Amanda, Annie, or even...
Why Gravity Falls Flat
That Hollywood is a boy’s club is so self-evident, I have zero interest in repeating the common arguments or restating the common evidence. If you have any doubt about the lack of roles for women in front of the camera or behind it, just google it. It’s not new information, and it’s already disappointed and frustrated enough people, so I’m going to assume that it’s a given. Hollywood is not friendly to women, and it sucks.Moving on.What makes me so irritated about Gravity is that it pretends...
Interview with Steven Klein: On Art, Madonna, and Identity
[I did this interview with Steven Klein in Berlin, in 2005. It feels particularly relevant now, in light of his recent work with Madonna, so I thought I'd repost it.] The photographer Steven Klein So what do a photographer and a writer, who, in their own ways, incorporate notions of fashion, fetish, and celebrity into their work, talk about? Do they talk about sex or fashion? Do they dish the dirt about which celebrity is harder to work with? Not really. Instead, they talk about identity,...