Peter Baxter

For many years my research interests centred on the films of the American director Josef von Sternberg, whose work with Marlene Dietrich retains the power to engage and perplex its spectators decades after it appeared in the early 1930s.

I edited one book of essays about Sternberg, and wrote another, Just Watch! Sternberg, Paramount and America, on their film Blonde Venus.  
By extension, my teaching has always included a course on Hollywood cinema during the heyday of the studio system. I think the cinema of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s created images, characters and narratives that affect attitudes and outlooks even to this day. My other courses have included topics such as theory and contemporary world cinema.

In both the Winter Term 1995 and Fall Term 1995 I taught a course on recent European cinema at Queen's University's International Study Centre in England.

At present I am working on two major projects. One is a study of John Ford's treatment of the themes of race, ethnicity and gender. The other is an inquiry into how contemporary developments in politics, technology and the economy are affecting filmmaking in France. Its working title is 'National Cinema in a Post-National Age'.