Material Detail

Dr. Curtis was interviewed by Laureano Ralon on December 12th, 2011 as part of the Figure/Ground Communication scholarly interview series: http://www.figureground.ca/interviews/

Jim Curtis received his BA in German from Vanderbilt University, and his MA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is now Professor Emeritus of Russian from the University of Missouri, where he taught for 31 years, and where he received numerous teaching awards. Jim grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, and that may have something to do with the fact that his interests are split between American popular culture, and Russian high culture. He addressed both of those topics in Culture as Polyphony, the first general explanation and defense of McLuhan’s theories. He returned to Russian studies with Solzhenitsyn’s Traditional Imagination, and then returned to popular culture with Rock Eras. Interpretations of Music and Society, 1953-1983. Rock Eras was the first book to apply McLuhan’s ideas to popular culture in a systemic way. He continued this alternation with Boris Eichenbaum. His Family, His Country, and the Literature of His County, about a major Russian formalist critic, and with his as yet unpublished book on Bob Dylan, which discusses — among other things — McLuhan’s influence on Dylan. He is now working on A Perfect Storm of Violence. How the Word and the Wall Created Stalinism, a book that will apply linguistics, anthropology and media theory to an interpretation of Stalinism.