Susan Ohmer

Professor Emerita

Specialties

History, Theory, and Criticism

Research Interests

Media Industries, Animation and Disney, Adaptation Theory and Transmedia Texts, Media and Presidential Elections, Alfred Hitchcock and London, Harry Potter

Biography

Susan Ohmer has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1998 after earning her doctorate in Cinema Studies from New York University and serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan (1997-1998). As an administrator at Notre Dame, she served as a Provost's Fellow (2007-2009), as Assistant Provost (2009-2010), Interim Director of the Hesburgh Libraries (2010-2011) and from 2011-2013 led Digital ND, a campus-wide initiative to streamline and strengthen digital work at Notre Dame. Her professional service includes serving as a board member and officer of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2003-2006) and as co-editor of the journal The Moving Image (2012-2019). She has also served on the Boards of Directors of the South Bend Museum of Art and of WNIT, the public broadcasting station, where she chaired the Board from 2015-2020.

Representative Publications, Performances, and Creative Works

George Gallup in Hollywood. New York: Columbia University Press. October 2006.   

“Standard Oil, Disney, and the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.” In Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry. Eds. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.  

“Classical Hollywood and Animation, 1926-1948.” In Animation volume of the series Behind the Silver Screen. Ed. Scott Curtis. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019, pp. 48-74. 

“Laughter by Numbers: The Science of Pleasure at the Walt Disney Studio.” In Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood. Eds. Charles Keil and Daniel Goldmark. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, pp. 109-126.

“Walt Disney’s Peter Pan: Animation, Fantasy and Industrial Production.” In Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination. Eds. Lester D. Friedman and Allison B. Kavey. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009, pp. 151-187.