Biography
James Lastra specializes in American film, and has published extensively on sound in film, especially as it relates to the unfolding history of modernity and the aesthetics of both high and vernacular modernisms. Other sound interests include the material history of human sensory experience and how it conditions the emergence and normalization of representational technologies. His latest sound research deals with theories of asynchronous sound in film, and with the Wagnerian aesthetics of modern sound design in American film. Lastra has a specific research interest in Surrealism both in Europe and in the United States, silent film comedy, American experimental film, and the films and writing of Luis Buñuel. Like most of the members of Cinema and Media Studies, he approaches the American cinema as part of a global system of cultural production and exchange.
Publications
Teaching
Autumn Quarter 2023
CMST 14580: Special Topics: Uncanny
CMST 27299: Written Thesis Workshop
Spring Quarter 2024
CMST 28700: History of International Cinema, Part III: 1960-1990
Previous courses taught include: Film and the Moving Image (Paris; CMST 14400), Horror and Beyond (CMST 65500), Issues in Film Sound (CMST 28003/38003), The Camera and Other Creatures (CMST 67103), Sound Studies (CMST 68004), Senior Colloquium (CMST 29800), The Single-Shot Film (CMST 67120), Contemporary Horror (CMST 25503 / 35503), Senses and Technology (CMST 68008), Cinemas of Immersion (CMST 65510), and Surrealism and the American Cinema (CMST 25800)