Biography

Chris Cagle is an associate professor of film history and theory in the Film and Media Arts Department. His research interests include classical Hollywood, cinematography, documentary, and social theory. His book, Sociology on Film: Postwar Hollywood's Prestige Commodity (Rutgers University Press), examines the 1940s social problem film as both a form of popular sociology and a strain of middlebrow "prestige" cinema. Additionally, he has published essays in Cinema Journal, Screen, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and in a number of edited volumes, including most recently Cinematography (Patrick Keating, ed., Rutgers UP) and Middlebrow Cinema (Sally Faulkner, ed., Routledge).  His newest book project is an examination of an international "festival film" style in contemporary documentary.  His blog, Category D, showcases research in progress and discusses disciplinary issues in film and media studies.

Research

Sociology on Film: Postwar Hollywood's Prestige Commodity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016).

"Hollywood Middlebrow: A Dialectical Approach," in Middlebrow Cinema, ed. Sally Faulkner (London: Routledge, 2016), 15-32.

"Bourdieu and Film Studies: Beyond the Taste Agenda," in New Uses of Bourdieu in Film and Media Studies, ed. Guy Austin (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016), 35-50.

“Classical Hollywood, 1928–1946,” in Cinematography, ed. Patrick Keating (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 34-59.

“Postclassical Nonfiction: Narration in the Contemporary Documentary,” Cinema Journal 52, no. 1  (Fall 2012): 45-65.