Lewis, Randolph R. 1966-

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LEWIS, Randolph R. 1966-

PERSONAL:

Born December 2, 1966, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Thomas (in sales) and Joyce (a homemaker) Lewis; married Circe Sturm (an anthropologist and professor), June 4, 1993. Ethnicity: "Irish." Education: University of Texas—Austin, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., 1994. Hobbies and other interests: Playing music professionally, playing basketball.

ADDRESSES:

Home—926 Eufaula, Norman, OK 73069. Office—Honors College, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019-0390. E-mail—rrlewis@hotmail.com.

CAREER:

University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Chickasha, assistant professor of American studies and director of interdisciplinary studies, 1998-2001; University of Oklahoma, Norman, assistant professor in Honors College, 2001—.

MEMBER:

American Studies Association, Society for Cinema Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Annual prize, American Theater Library Association, 2001, for Emile de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Thomas F. Staley) Reflections on James Joyce: Stuart Gilbert's Paris Journal, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1993.

Emile de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals, including Oklahoma Today. Assistant editor, Joyce Studies Annual, 1989-93; editor of the Internet journal, Jazz and American Culture, between 1997 and 1998; guest editor, Library Chronicle.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Man of Aran, a novel "about a graduate student whose life goes awry when he desperately seeks solace in the misty west of Ireland"; research on video artist Bill Viola and Native American documentary filmmakers such as Sandy Osawa.

SIDELIGHTS:

Randolph R. Lewis told CA: "Several years ago, as a twenty-one-year-old with far more interest than skill in all things literary, I went to graduate school to learn how to write a book. Mostly by accident, I made a wise choice. American studies turned out to be the ideal academic setting for such a pursuit. Unlike many academic departments in recent decades, American studies promotes clarity and conviction in the written word. Because it is an interdisciplinary field, it encourages anything that allows one to communicate across disciplinary boundaries and with the general public. This emphasis may have been particularly strong at the University of Texas at Austin, where I studied with Robert Crunden, a fine stylist and thinker on modernism, and perhaps most influentially, Bill Stott, the author of Write to the Point, as well as seminal books on documentary. Listening to Bill read my papers into a tape recorder, something he did with all student assignments, was incredibly useful for allowing me to find a good writing voice that was not contrived and cramped in the manner of much academic writing.

"I am happy to say that the good response to my first book, on the American filmmaker Emile de Antonio, seems to have validated this approach, at least for me. In that book, I was able to write about a variety of fields, from art history to film studies to political history, with a semblance of the grace and clarity that Bill Stott models in his own writing. Amazingly (to me, at least) the ability to put together a nonfiction book had a fringe benefit—it gave me a far better sense of how to write fiction. In the past three years, I've worked on a novel called Man of Aran, which I hope will find a home with a publisher. Even if it does not, I believe it's a solid first novel and something I could not have written without the stylistic and intellectual rigor of my graduate studies. For confirmation, I need only look at the fiction I wrote as an undergraduate—a sobering exercise if one were ever needed.

"I write on subjects that I think are under-appreciated but important to understanding what is really happening in America. De Antonio was the most important political filmmaker in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century, yet no book had been written on him. He was an intellectual, a radical, an aristocrat, and an artist with a unique and powerful vision, surely someone who deserved to be written about. I want to illuminate dark corners of the American experience, as I did in the articles I wrote on Las Vegas as American 'in extremis' or on the cultural history of chain gangs. Perhaps more importantly, I want to celebrate those who are shedding light on the deeper nature of our lives in this country, whether it's a multicultural painter like Leon Polk Smith, a radical filmmaker like de Antonio or Sandy Osawa, or a profound video artist like Bill Viola. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to explore such topics at great length, and for me this is the great luxury and privilege of being a writer working in the academy."