Leah Anderst - Associate Professor of English

Leah Anderst portrait

Contact Info:

Office / Mailbox: H324
Email: LAnderst@qcc.cuny.edu
Campus Phone: 718-631-6292 / @LeahAnderst

Doc Film Course Blog

Courses Taught:

BE 112 (ALP)

ENGL 101 

ENGL 102 

ENGL 242

Originally from Fargo, North Dakota, I came to New York City in 2002, and I joined the Queensborough community in the fall of 2012. Prior to QCC, I was a visiting instructor of writing at Marymount Manhattan College, and I have taught widely as an adjunct within CUNY. I worked as a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow at City College while completing my dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center in Comparative Literature. My research and teaching interests include autobiography; film studies, with a focus on French film and nonfiction films; narrative theory, French and American psychological novels; writing pedagogy and Writing Across the Curriculum.

I co-coordinated QCC's Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) until Fall 2018. Courses in this program link a section of BE112 or BE122 with a section of EN101, offering students the opportunity to complete their developmental course work and earn credit for EN101 in the same semester. More information about our ALP courses can be found here. Currenty, I serve the department as our Writing Program Director.

EDUCATION

PhD, Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2010.
MA, Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2005
BA, English Literature, Butler University, 2001

PUBLICATIONS

(forthcoming) "“It both is and isn’t my life”: Autobiography, Adaption, and Emotion in Fun Home, the Musical." The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In, edited by Janine Utell. University Press of Mississippi. January 2020. 

Calling to Witness: Complicating Autobiography and Narrative Empathy in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied.” Studies in Documentary Film 13.1 (Spring 2019): 73-89.

Guest Editors' Introduction: ALP Focused Special issue of The Basic Writing e-journal (14.1) 2016. (published 2018)

"Out of Bounds? Professors/Students /Friends / Intimates." Visible Pedagogy, Teach@CUNY (3/32/2017).

"Perceval le Gallois (Éric Rohmer, 1978): Channeling Chrétien de Troyes Through Cinema." Senses of Cinema 82 (March 2017).

“Assessing the Accelerated Learning Program Model for Linguistically Diverse Developmental Writing Students.” Co-authored with Jennifer Maloy and Jed Shahar. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 44.1 (Sept 2016): 11-31.

Feeling with Real Others: Narrative Empathy in the Autobiographies of Doris Lessing and Alison Bechdel.” Narrative 23.3 (October 2015): 271-290.

The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master. Leah Anderst, Ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

This volume is a collection of seventeen critical essays on the French filmmaker Eric Rohmer (1920-2010). The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master is the first collection of essays in English on this important filmmaker, and it brings together a diverse array of writers and scholars including Dudley Andrew, Tom Gunning, Nöel Herpe, T Jefferson Kline, and Ivone Margulies.

“Rohmer’s Poetics of Placelessness.” In The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master, Leah Anderst, Ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

"Memory’s Chorus: Stories We Tell and Sarah Polley’s Theory of Autobiography." Senses of Cinema Issue 69 (December 2013). Web.

"'I've spent a lot of time looking at these images': The 'Viewing I' in Contemporary Autobiographical Film." a/b:Auto/Biography Studies 28.2 (Winter 2013): 212-241.

Reading Flaubert’s First and Second Éducation sentimentale.” Orbis Litterarum 67.4 (August 2012): 330-352. [Forthcoming Reprint in Gustave Flaubert: Critical Insights. Edited by Tom Hubbard (New York: Grey House Publishing, 2016)]

Cinematic Free Indirect Style: Represented Memory in Hiroshima mon amour.Narrative 19.3 (Fall 2011): 358-382.

Address Unknown.” Personal Essay, The Morning News. December 1, 2011. Web.

On Not ‘Identifying’ with Philip Marlowe: Viewing Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake through Murray Smith’s Engaging Characters.” Global Graffiti, 2. Oct. 1, 2010. Web.

Reviews and Translations

Translation from French: Christian Vivani, “Hail the Conquering Auteur: Preston Sturges in the Revue du cinéma 1946-1949.” in Preston Sturges. Ed. by. Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff. Edinburgh University Press.

New Documentary Films." BAMcinemaFest 2015, Offscreen 19.6 (September 2015). Web.

"A Family Affair: Brooklyn's BAMcinemaFest (June 18-29, 2014)." Festival Report, Bright Lights Film Journal. (August 2014).

"Review of Matthew Campora's Subjective Realist Cinema (Berghahn 2014). Film Criticism 39.1 (Fall 2014): 117-120.

“Review of Carol Mavor’s Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, Sans Soleil, and Hiroshima mon amour (Duke, 2012). Film Criticism 38.3 (Spring 2014): 71-75.

“Review of Fiona Handyside’s Eric Rohmer: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2014). Modern and Contemporary France 22:4 (September 2014): 555-557.

“Review of Marion Schmid’s Chantal Akerman.” (French Film Directors, Manchester University Press, 2010). The Quarterly Review of Film and Video 30:1 (January 2013): 103-106.

“Review of Jacob Leigh’s The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination, and the Social World.” (Continuum, 2012). Modern & Contemporary France 22.1 (January 2014): 113-115.

“Review of Timothy Corrigan’s The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker.” (Oxford University Press, July 2011). The Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31.1 (January 2014): 282-288.

Translation from French: Thomas, François, “Overlapping Dialogue in the Films of Orson Welles.” in Film Dialogue. Ed. By Jeff Jaeckle. New York: Columbia UP, 2013.

“Review of Paul Coates’s Screening the Face (Palgrave, 2012). Film Criticism 38.2 (Winter 2013): 65-68.

Review of Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate, Back to the Future” (BFI Film Classics, Oct. 2010). Bright Lights Film Journal. Issue 72 (May 2011).

Campus Cultural Centers

Kupferberg Holocaust Center exterior lit up at nightOpens in a new window
Kupferberg Holocaust Center Opens in a new window

The KHC uses the lessons of the Holocaust to educate current and future generations about the ramifications of unbridled prejudice, racism and stereotyping.

Russian Ballet performing at the Queensborough Performing Arts CenterOpens in a new window
QPAC: Performing Arts CenterOpens in a new window

QPAC is an invaluable entertainment company in this region with a growing national reputation. The arts at QPAC continues to play a vital role in transforming lives and building stronger communities.

Queensborough Art Gallery exterior in the afternoonOpens in a new window
QCC Art Gallery

The QCC Art Gallery of the City University of New York is a vital educational and cultural resource for Queensborough Community College, the Borough of Queens and the surrounding communities.