About Dr. Graham

Allison Graham's research and teaching focus upon American culture, media, and politics (in particular, the evolving history and representation of the American South and the Civil Rights Movement). Along with national awards for her film production work with colleagues David Appleby and Steve Ross (an Emmy nomination, among others), she has received a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship from the U.K. that led to a Visiting Professorship at the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham (where she holds an honorary appointment as Special Professor of American Film). Dr. Graham has delivered film and lecture presentations in forums as diverse as the Barbican Centre in London; C-SPAN Network; and cinemas and universities throughout the U.S., England, Northern Ireland, Sweden, and South Africa. In addition to her research, she has developed civil rights tours of the Mississippi Delta for academic organizations and visiting scholars, has involved students in on-site research in post-Katrina New Orleans, and has organized annual study abroad tours for the University Honors Program (Ireland and Northern Ireland, Peru).

Education

M.A., Ph.D., University of Florida
B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, Florida State University

Teaching Areas

Media history and criticism
Media and politics
Representation of the American South and the Civil Rights Movement

Research and Scholarly Activities

Selected Books and Productions

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Media. Co-Editor, with Sharon Monteith. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2011.
Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2001. (Paperback, 2003)
At the River I Stand (producer/director/writer with David Appleby and Steve Ross). 1993.

Selected Articles

"Hollywood Activism, Daytime Verité, and the March on Washington." Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 56 (2015).

"'We Ain't Doin' Civil Rights': The Life and Times of a Genre, as Told in The Help." Southern Cultures (Spring 2014), 51-64.

"Free At Last: Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Future of Conspiracy." Journal of American Studies 43 (August 2010), 601-11.

"Red Necks, White Sheets, and Blue States: The Persistence of Regionalism in the Politics of Hollywood." The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism. M. Lassiter and J. Crespino, Eds. New York: Oxford, 2009.

"The South in Popular Culture." A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South. R. Gray and O. Robinson, Eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

"Spectacles of the Simpson Year." Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the Television Criticism of the Future. A. Hague and D. Lavery, Eds. New York: Columbia University and Wallflower Press, 2002.

"'The Loveliest and Purest of God's Creatures': The Three Faces of Eve and the Crisis of Southern Womanhood." Classic Hollywood/Classic Whiteness. D. Bernardi, Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2001.

"Reclaiming the South: Civil Rights Films and the New Red Menace." Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle. B. Ward, Ed. Gainesville: University of Florida, 2001.

"Remapping Dogpatch: Northern Media on the Southern Circuit." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 56 (1997): 334-340. Reprinted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 21 Sept. 1997, 8J+.

"Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? Conspiracy Theory and The X-Files." Deny All Knowledge: Reading 'The X-Files.' A. Hague, D. Lavery, and M. Cartwright, Eds. Syracuse: Syracuse University, 1996.

"Journey to the Center of the Fifties: The Cult of Banality." The Cult Film Experience: Beyond All Reason. J.P. Telotte, Ed. Austin: University of Texas, 1991.

"Motion Sickness: Strangers in Our Own Dying." The Georgia Review, 45 (1991), 278-89.

"'The Fallen Wonder of the World': Brian DePalma's Horror Films." American Horrors: Essays on the Modern Horror Film. Gregory Waller, Ed. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1987.

"The Phantom Self: James M. Cain's Lost American in the Early Neorealism of Visconti and Antonioni." Film Criticism 14 (1984), 47-62.

"History, Nostalgia, and the Criminality of Popular Culture." The Georgia Review 38 (1984), 348-64. Reprinted in the New York Tribune, "Cultural Journal," 12 Oct. 1984 and 19 Oct. 1984.