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Kristopher Mecholsky

Liberal arts professor

Education

  • Ph.D., English, Louisiana State University
  • M.A., literature & language, Marymount University
  • B.A., English, The Catholic University of America

Credentials

Academic

  • Professor of liberal arts, Fall 2021–present, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
  • Associate director of research advancement, 2019–21, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  • Instructor, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University, 2015–21, Baton Rouge, LA
  • Faculty tutor and instructor/grant specialist, 2014–19, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  • Postdoctoral instructor, 2012–13, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
  • Adjunct assistant and associate professor, 2010–19, University of Maryland Global Campus

Awards, recognitions, and honors

  • Research Grant for Temporary Faculty and Independent Scholars, South Central Modern Language Association, 2014
  • Graduate Student Dissertation Grant, South Central Modern Language Association, 2012
  • Lewis P. Simpson Distinguished Dissertation Award, Department of English, Louisiana State University, 2013
  • James Olney Distinguished Dissertation Award, Louisiana State University, 2013
  • Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, Louisiana State University, 2012

Organizations

  • Film/Literature Association, 2016–present
  • South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 2014–present
  • Association for Adaptation Studies, 2014–present
  • Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, 2014–present
  • ALA Crime Studies Network, 2013–present
  • North American Association of Anarchist Studies, 2011–present
  • Society for the Study of Southern Literature, 2010–present

Publications and presentations

Books

  • James M. Cain: Hard-boiled Mythmaker, with David Madden, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Selected articles

  • "Memory, History, and True Crime." Studies in Crime Writing, eds. David Schmid and Jean Murley, 2020.
  • "The Mansion as Soft-boiled Noir." The Faulkner Journal 28.1, ed. Erik Dussere, 2016.
  • "Adaptation is Anarchist: Understanding Narrative through Complexity." Special Issue: Adaptation Studies, eds. R. Barton Palmer and Julie Grossman. The South Atlantic Review 80.3-4, Fall 2015.

Book chapters

  • "The Mozart of the Motor City: Elmore Leonard and Noir Buffa." 'If It Sounds Like Writing': Critical Essays on the Work of Elmore Leonard, ed. Charles J. Rzepka, Wiley, Spring 2020.
  • "Ecological Anarchy and Philosophical Anarchism in the Florida Crime Fiction of John D. MacDonald." Detecting the South: The Intersections of Film Noir, the Detective Genre, and the Southern Imagination, eds. Deborah Barker and Theresa Starkey, LSU Press, Oct. 2019.
  • "II thriller psicologico: una panoramica" [Italian translation of previous article, "The Psychological Thriller: An Overview"]. I labirinti della mente: dal thriller psicologico al criminal profiling, eds. Maurizio Ascari and Alessandra Calanchi, Aras, 2018.
  • "Authorship and Scales of Adaptation in Patricia Highsmith and Steven North's Chillers." Patricia Highsmith on Screen, eds. Wieland Schwanebeck and Douglas McFarland, Palgrave, Sept. 2018.
  • "The Triumph of Being Unfaithful: Film Adaptations of The Valley of Fear." Behind the Canonical Screen, eds. Lyndsay Faye and Ashley Polasek, Baker Street Irregulars, Spring 2016.
  • "Dishonest Reckoning: Play-'Acting Through' Personal Trauma and the Shoah in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island." The Fantastic in Holocaust Literature and Film: Critical Perspectives, eds. Judith Kerman and John Edgar Browning, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015.
  • "The Psychological Thriller: An Overview." Critical Insights: The American Thriller, ed. Gary Hoppenstand. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2014.

Selected presentations

  • Round table on Burt Reynolds (organizer and participant). South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, November 15–17, 2019.
  • "The Place of Film in the Work of Elmore Leonard," presented at Literature/Film Association, New Orleans, LA, November 29–December 1, 2018.
  • "The Agony of Lafitte: The Human Drama of Piracy in the Parlor," presented at South Atlantic Modern Language Association (Association of Adaptation Studies), Birmingham, AL, November 2-4, 2018.
  • "The Varieties of Pirate Experience in Southern Fiction," presented at Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Austin, TX, February 15–18, 2018.
  • "My Funny Valentine: Burt Reynolds's Vision of Gender and Sexuality in his Crime Films," presented at South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Atlanta, GA, November 3–5, 2017.
  • "The Mansion as Soft-Boiled Noir," presented at American Literature Association Symposium ("Criminal America: Reading, Studying and Teaching American Crime Fiction"), Chicago, IL, March 3–4, 2017.
  • "Conscience of The Courier: Hurston's Literary Journalism," presented at Comparative Drama Conference, Baltimore, MD, April 4–6, 2013.
  • "The Triumph of Being Unfaithful: Film Adaptations of The Valley of Fear," presented at Baker Street Irregulars-UCLA Symposium, Sherlock Holmes: Behind the Canonical Screen, Los Angeles, CA, September 1-3, 2012.
  • "Another Lost Cause: The Rise and Fall of Burt Reynolds as the New Southern Man" on the "Bootlegging Burt Reynolds," presented at Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Nashville, TN, March 29–April 1, 2012.
  • "Continental Adaptation: The Modern Cinderella's Journey through James Cain, John Stahl, and Douglas Sirk," presented at South Central Modern Language Association, Hot Springs, AR. October 27–29, 2011.