J. D. Connor

I'm an Associate Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where I teach and research contemporary Hollywood. Hollywood Math and Aftermath is my new book; it's about movies, television, finance, and the Great Recession. The Studios after the Studios was my first. Both are chock full of readings of films you probably know, from The Big Short to Moneyball to Source Code. My next project is Comedy Equals Comedy Plus Time, a small book about time and timing in recents standup and sketch. I'm also hard at work on a book about tape recording called Archives of the Ambient. There, I'm trying to figure out what happened to art—all sorts of art—when it became possible to pile up an enormous, almost untranscribable mountain of recordings. Along the way, I'll discuss Louis Armstrong, Glenn Gould, Janet Malcolm, Andy Warhol, and, of course, Richard Nixon.

Before I came to USC, I taught at Yale, Harvard, and Fordham; I got my PhD at Johns Hopkins. Over the years, I've written for non-academic audiences in the LA Review of Books, Slate, and the Boston Globe, and I've done radio in Boston, Philly, and once on the estimable Leonard Lopate show. I love to lead film discussions with interested audiences, and I've been doing it for years at places like Real Art Ways in Hartford.

Unlike everyone else in LA, I don't have a podcast, but I do plan to start doing video essays. You can reach me on twitter @jdconnor or visit my website www.johnconnorlikeintheterminator.com to read a bunch of stuff.