HitchCon ‘23: A look back.

HITCHCOCK UNBOUND: Reimagining the Art of the Story

No one knew better than Alfred Hitchcock when to obey the rules of cinema and when to break them. HitchCon ‘23 will explore the ways in which he pushed the boundaries of his craft, thrilling audiences and blazing new trails for storytellers today.

Be sure to sign up and be among the first to find out who’s who and what’s what in 2024.

A STELLAR LINEUP

HitchCon ‘23 Keynote Speakers

The full lineup

Featuring academics, filmmakers, podcasters, playwrights and up-and-coming students from the United States, Canada, England, Wales and Hong Kong.

  • Neil Badmington

    Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, UK. Author, Perpetual Movement: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Hitchcock’s Magic. Editor, Alfred Hitchcock: Critical Evaluations of Leading Film-makers.

  • Todd Berliner

    Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he teaches film aesthetics, narration, and style and American film history. He is the author of Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2010).

  • Elizabeth L. Bullock

    HitchCon Advisory Board member. For Elizabeth Bullock, movies are a “gateway drug” to a life of the mind. As an adjunct instructor, Beth teaches cinema, art history, and humanities courses at the City Colleges of Chicago and film studies at Dominican University. Her Hitchcock course surveys the oeuvre and philosophy of the director from Blackmail through Marnie. Her essay "Naughts and Crosses: Marital and Cinematic Gamesmanship in Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith" appears in Hitchcock Annual, 2022.

  • Katy Coakley

    Katy is a student at Dominican University, Chicago, majoring in Digital Journalism with a minor in Film Studies.

  • Steven DeRosa

    HitchCon Advisory Board member. Steven is the author of Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes. He’s appeared on-screen in the documentary Viaggio nel Cinema in 3D: Una Storia Vintage, which premiered at the 2016 Venice Film Festival; in the documentary The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style; and in featurettes on home video releases of To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest. Since 2011, Steven has been teaching film studies and screenwriting at Mercy University in Westchester County, New York. Beginning with his popular course on Hitchcock, Steven partnered with his local Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to host discussions for both students and the theater audience. He’s also hosted film series on Orson Welles, Hollywood Westerns, and Screwball Comedies.

  • Marilyn Fabe

    Marilyn teaches courses in the history and aesthetics of the silent film, the history and theory of the sound film, the avant-garde film and auteur courses on Alfred Hitchcock and other directors. Her book Closely Watched Films, updated for a tenth anniversary edition, focuses on the accomplishments of fifteen film directors, illustrating each director’s contribution to narrative film art. Her recent research involves the connection of the director’s life to his or her films. Her essay, “Shooting to Kill: Hitchcock’s Heroines and the Perverse Scenario” appears in Examining Lives: Self-Reflections in Psychobiography (Oxford University Press, 2015).

  • Joel Gunz

    President & Host, HitchCon. An independent scholar known online as the Alfred Hitchcock Geek, Joel is an award-winning filmmaker and publisher of The Hitchcockian Quarterly. His fascination with the Master of Cinema commenced at age 12 and never stopped, eventuating in hundreds of scholarly articles, chapters and essays. As a film essayist, Joel adds his personal history to his scholarship, blending the two with special effects that re-examine the duality of subject and object, the imaginal and the real. His latest such film, Spellbound by L’Amour Fou, won Best Short Documentary at the Medusa Film Festival. He is also producer and director of three essay film series: How to Watch Hitchcock (2018-19), Freak the Geek (2018-current) and Alfred Hitchcock, Master of the Surreal (2019-current). Joel and his partner, Christy La Guardia, live with their beagle, Charlie, in Olympia, Washington.

  • Jeff Hughes

    Jeff is a graduate student in the Cinema Studies department at New York University, returning to academia after a twenty year absence. In that time he authored four plays, two musicals, and founded Boardwalk Theatre Company, an organization dedicated to after school theater education in underserved communities like Asbury Park, NJ. For 18 years he served as the editor-in-chief and head writer of DaBearsBlog, the nation’s leading Chicago Bears website, which he co-founded in 2005.

  • Elisabeth Karlin

    HitchCon Advisory Board member. Elisabeth Karlin is an award-winning playwright living in New York. Her plays include The Night the Ocean Met the Bay (Next Stage Press); The Showman and the Spirit (Winner, 2017 Stanley Drama Award); Hotbed (Epic Play Readings, Project Y Theatre; Reading, Jersey City Theatre Center) Bodega Bay (The Abingdon Theatre Company; Winner of the 2013 Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting; THE BEST MEN’S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2014 and THE BEST WOMEN’S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2014, Smith and Kraus) and many more. A dedicated film buff, Elisabeth has been a frequent contributor to the Alfred Hitchcock Geek Blog, covering a wide range of themes inspired by The Master. An expanded version of her talk at HitchCon21 on “The Dynamic Heroines of Hitchcock” appears in the current volume of The Hitchcock Annual.

  • H Marshall Leicester

    Marshall is a Professor Emeritus of Literature, UC Santa Cruz and author, What Ought to Scare You: Affect and Horror in the Hollywood Studio System, 1922-1968, forthcoming from McFarland.

  • Rebecca McCallum

    Rebecca is creator and host of the podcast Talking Hitchcock. She also has an ongoing collection of essays, Hitchcock’s Women, with Moving Pictures Club, where she explores the women of his films through a female perspective. She is Assistant Editor of Ghouls Magazine and has by-lines in print and online with Grim Journal, Rue Morgue, Second Sight and Fangoria.

  • Pat McFadden

    HitchCon Advisory Board member. Pat grew up inside most of the revival movie theaters in Manhattan. After winning the Student Emmy and the regional Student Academy Award for his short film Equilibriumness, he transplanted himself in California, where he worked several years as a First Assistant Film Editor, notably on HBO tele-features. Pat was an Executive Assistant at Walt Disney Imagineering for 23 years.

    The Hitchcock “hobby” has been “filling” Pat's time for all of his adult life, and thanks to the Internet, he found his people. He is honored to be a contributing editor and creative consultant for Joel Gunz’s Alfred Hitchcock Geek Facebook Page, and an associate producer for Good Evening: an Alfred Hitchcock Podcast, where he is referred to as “The Man Who Knows Exactly Enough.” He’s author of “Sir Hitch and Uncle Walt: Feud? What Feud?” The Hitchcockian Quarterly, 2023.

  • D. A. (David) Miller

    D. A. (David) Miller is John F. Hotchkis Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. His work on Hitchcock includes “Anal Rope’’ and Hidden Hitchcock.

  • Tony Lee Moral

    Tony's new book Hitchcock: The Storyboards (Penguin Random House, September 2023) explores the visual design of The 39 Steps through to Torn Curtain. An updated version of The Young Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Master Class (2022) focuses on Hitchcock's influence on a new generation of content creators. He is also author of The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds and Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie.

  • Mark W. Padilla, PhD

    Mark is Distinguished Professor of Classical Studies at Christopher Newport University and former CNU provost. He’s the author of “Orpheus Themes in Vertigo,” The Hitchcockian Quarterly, 2023; Classical Myth in Alfred Hitchcock's Wrong Man and Grace Kelly Films (2019); "Hitchcock's Textured Characters in The Skin Game" (Hitchcock Annual ‘21) and Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock (2016). His forthcoming monograph, Classical Vertigo: Mythic Shapes and Contemporary Influences in Hitchcock’s Storied Film is scheduled for 2023 publication.

  • Walter Raubicheck

    HitchCon Advisory Board member. Walter Raubicheck is professor of English at Pace University in New York. He is the co-author with Walter Srebnick of Scripting Hitchcock (2011), and co-editor, with Srebnick, of Hitchcock’s Re-released Films: From Rope to Vertigo (1991). More recently, he edited Hitchcock and the Cold War: New Essays on the Espionage Films, 1956-1969. A playwright, he debuted The New Norman, a play about the making of Psycho at HitchCon ‘22. In addition to his work on Hitchcock, he has published essays on twentieth-century authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Dashiell Hammett, and G. K. Chesterton.

  • Walter Srebnick

    Walter is Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Pace University. He has written on literature and film, and is the coeditor of Hitchcock’s Rereleased Films and coauthor of Scripting Hitchcock, both with Walter Raubicheck. He is currently an educator at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

  • Maurice Yacowar

    In 1968 Maurice launched film studies at Brock University. He served as dean at Brock, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and The University of Calgary, where he retired in 2006 as Professor Emeritus (English and Film Studies). His books include Hitchcock’s British Films (Shoestring, 1977; Wayne State U revised edition 2010) and critical studies of Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Paul Morrissey, Tennessee Williams, the British artist/novelist John Bratby and The Sopranos. His most recent books are Reading Shtisel and After Shtisel, an episode-by-episode analysis of the Israeli TV series. He provided the Criterion laser-disc commentary on Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Morrissey’s Dracula and Frankenstein films. He writes occasional film analyses on yacowar.blogspot.com. He now lives in Victoria, BC.

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