George Grella

Associate Professor of English and Film Studies

PhD  University of Kansas
Nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature, twentieth-century British literature, film, the novel

Research/Writing interests

In addition to more traditional areas of research, George Grella's interests and writings include popular culture and literature, and film. He has published widely on detective fiction and related crime novels, gangster novels, and espionage fiction; on film; and on baseball. A genre critic, he often approaches his subjects from the standpoint of myth, ritual, and archetype. He is currently writing a study of the American novelist Ross Macdonald and a book on baseball and American culture.

Selected publications

• "James Bond: Culture Hero," in The New Republic, 30 May 1964, reprinted in eleven anthologies
• "The Gangster Novel: The Urban Pastoral," in Tough Guy Writers of the Thirties, ed. David Madden, Southern Illinois 1968
• "Murder and Manners: The Formal Detective Novel," in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 4.1 (1970), reprinted in several books
• "Murder and the Mean Streets: The Hard-Boiled Detective Novel," in Contempora 1.1 (1970), reprinted in several books
• "Simenon and Maigret," in ADAM International Review 328-330 (1969)
• "Baseball and the American Dream," in The Massachusetts Review 16 (1975), reprinted in several books
• "The Colonial Movie and The Man Who Would Be King," in Texas Sudies in Literature and Language 22 (1980)
• "Georges Simenon," in Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, I-II, Scribner's 1998
• "Film in Fiction: The Real and the Reel in Elmore Leonard," in The Detective in American Fiction, Film, and Television, ed. Jerome H. Delamater and Ruth Prigozy, Greenwood 1998
• Confrontation, film, 1966 (scriptwriter, co-director, co-editor)
• Baseball and Personality, film, 1976 (author of original source, wrote screenplay, directed, edited, narrated, starred)
• Hundreds of articles on detective, mystery, espionage, suspense, and crime fiction; twentieth-century fiction; baseball; film; and individual figures including Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Ian Fleming, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, Georges Simenon, John le Carré, J.P. Donleavy, John Irving, Louis L'Amour, Graham Greene, Federico Fellini, and Martin Scorsese
• Thousands of book reviews and film reviews in a variety of publications
  

Teaching

Courses in American literature, particularly of the twentieth century; British literature of the twentieth century; film studies; the novel

Recent film courses

• Popular Film Genres: The Gangster Film (2007)
• Popular Film Genres: The Baseball Film (2005)
• Popular Film Genres: The Vampire Film (2004)
• Popular Film Genres: The Detective Film (2003)
• Popular Film Genres: The Science Fiction Film (2003)
• Popular Film Genres: The Horror Film (2002)
• Studies in a Director: The Films of Woody Allen (2007)
• Studies in a Director: The Films of Clint Eastwood (2006)
• Studies in a Director: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (2004)
• Studies in Film History: Films of the Thirties (2006)
• Studies in Film History: Films of the Sixties (2005)

Recent literature and writing courses

• American Moderns (taught yearly)
• Literary Journalism (2007, 2006, 2004)
• Detective Fiction (2005)
• 20th-century British Novel (2002)
• Ernest Hemingway (2001)
• American Contemporaries (2000)
• Graham Greene: Fiction and Film (2000)

Honors and activities

• Film Critic, City Newspaper
• Film Critic, WXXI-FM
• Advisory and Contributing Editor, Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers
• Advisory Editor, Twentieth-Century Fiction
• Board of Directors, The Documentary Channel
• Younger Humanist Award, National Endowment for the Humanities
• Member, National Humanities Faculty

gjg5@mail.rochester.edu
(585) 275-9265
420 Morey Hall