Ray Carney

Professor of Film and American Studies

AB, Harvard College
PhD, Rutgers University

Professor Carney has previously taught at Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Middlebury College. He is the author of more than ten books, including Cassavetes on Cassavetes; The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World; John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity; American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra; Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer; The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies; and the monograph on Shadows in the BFI Film Classics series. He is general editor of the Cambridge Film Classics, published by Cambridge University Press. He curated the Beat Culture and the New America show for the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on independent film and American literature, painting, and pragmatic philosophy, having edited or contributed to many volumes on the subject, including Morris Dickstein’s The Revival of Pragmatism and Townsend Ludington’s A Modern Mosaic. He is a frequent speaker at film festivals and scholarly events around the world, a contributor to national and international magazines and scholarly journals, and maintains a personal website devoted to film and other art at www.Cassavetes.com.