Christopher Yogerst
- Associate Professor, College of General Stds
Education
PhD, Communication, Regent University
MA, Critical Studies in Film and Television, Regent University
BA, Film Studies and English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Bio
Chris Yogerst is a communication scholar who focuses on the history of film and popular culture. He is the author of two books and has publications in the Journal of American Culture, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and The Journal of Popular Film and Television, among others. His work in the popular press can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hollywood Reporter, Daily Beast, Watchington Post, and The Atlantic. Yogerst has also appeared numerous times on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Publications
Books:
The Warner Brothers: How an Immigrant Family Came to Hollywood and Changed America (under contract at University Press of Kentucky).
Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures (University Press of Mississippi, 2020).
From the Headlines to Hollywood: The Birth and Boom of Warner Bros. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Peer-Reviewed Journals:
“A Face in the Crowd (1957): Reception and Relevancy, From the Dawn of Television to the Digital Age,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (publication scheduled for March 2021).
“Searching for Common Ground: Hollywood Prior to the Senate Investigation on Motion Picture War Propaganda, 1938-1941,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, (April 2019).
“Rod Serling’s Vast Promised Land: Battling Sponsors, Debating the FCC, and Fighting for Mature Television 1959-1966.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television. (September 2017).
“Hughes, Hawks, and Hays: The Monumental Censorship Battle Over Scarface (1932),” The Journal of American Culture (June 2017).
“Superhero Films: A Fascist National Complex or Exemplars of Moral Virtue?” Journal of Religion & Film (April 2017).
“Affirmation of Myth and Nostalgia in The Shootist (1976) and True Grit (2010),” The Quint: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly from the North (summer 2015).
“Faith Under the Fedora: Indiana Jones and the Heroic Journey Towards God,” Journal of Religion & Film (October 2014).
Book Chapters:
“Trust in the Journey: HBO’s Watchmen and Superhero Mythology,” co-authored with Mark Peterson, After Midnight: Analyzing the Post-Watchmen Sequels, University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming.
“Aristotle and the Wild West: The Western as Rhetorical Device,” Classics and the Western, Edited by Sue Matheson, Forthcoming.
“Individuation and the Psychology of Rebirth,” co-authored with Caitlin Yogerst, Wonder Woman Psychology: Lassoing the Truth, Edited by Travis Langley and Mara Wood, (Sterling, 2017).
“Rules for Surviving a Horror-Comedy: Satiric Genre Transformation from Scream to Zombieland,” The Laughing Dead: The Horror-Comedy Film from Bride of Frankenstein to Zombieland, Edited by Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Encyclopedia Entries:
Entries for Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Hollywood and World War II, the Hollywood Sign, and Warner Bros. for Hooray For Hollywood: The Cultural Encyclopedia of America’s Dream Factory (Greenwood 2018).
Book/Film/Exhibition Reviews in Academic Journals:
“Wisconsin Funnies Shows Comic’s Deep Roots in the American Midwest: A Review,” International Journal of Comic Art, Fall/Winter 2020.
“Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913–1916 (Book Review), Film & History, summer 2019.
“Los Angeles Plays Itself (Film Review),” Film & History, summer 2016.
“The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon (Book Review),” The Journal of Film and Video, spring/Summer 2013.
“The Philosophy of the Western (Book Review),” issue 59 of Senses of Cinema, June 2011.
Popular Press:
“When Democratic Senators Collaborated With American Nazis to Stop Hollywood From Taking On Hitler,” Daily Beast, September 27th, 2020.
“We Had Witnessed an Exhibition: On Thomas Doherty’s Little Lindy is Kidnapped,” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 24th, 2020.
“When the U.S. Government Went After Anti-Nazi Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 27th. 2020.
“Forgotten Movie Royalty.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 12th, 2020.
“A Respite for Refugees: The Sun and Her Stars.” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 31st, 2020.
“Sin, Glamour, and Photography in Hollywood’s Golden Age: On Two Books by Mark A. Vieira,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 14th, 2020.
“Into the Archives: on Letters from Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2nd, 2020.
“Why We Shouldn’t Fear Joker,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 10th, 2019.
“The Hunt May Be a Victim of America’s Misdirected Outrage,” The Hollywood Reporter, August 21st, 2019.
“Mel Brooks: Boomer’s Comedian,” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 11th, 2019.
“A Manifesto for Connecting Personally in a Tech-Dominated World,” The Washington Post, March 29th, 2019.
“Everyone Can Benefit From Dreyer’s English – Especially Scholars,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 12th, 2019.
“The Incredible Life of ‘Handsome Johnny,’ a Gangster Worthy of the Movies,” The Washington Post, November 22nd, 2018 (online) November 20th, 2018 (print).
“The Women Who Knew Howard Hughes,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 21st, 2018.
“The Most Powerful Person in Hollywood Without a Studio,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 11th, 2018.
“Wave of Anti-Semitism Today Resembles Pre-War Attitudes Towards Jewish-Led Hollywood,” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 4th, 2018.
“A Forgotten Filmmaker Who Influenced Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder Gets His Due,” The Washington Post, July 5th, 2018 (online) July 15th, 2018 (print).
“How Stan Lee Became The Man Behind Marvel,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 21st, 2018.
“When Hollywood Caved to the House-Un American Activities Committee,” The Washington Post. April 13th, 2018 (online), April 22nd, 2018 (print).
“The Man Who Saved Movies From Thomas Edison’s Monopoly,” The Washington Post. December 5th, 2017 (online), January 28th, 2018 (print).
“Hollywood, Los Angeles Spies, and the Underground Battle Against Hitler,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 23rd, 2017.
“The Real and Imagined in Douglas Rushkoff’s Aleister & Adolf,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 21st, 2017.
“In An Always-On World, Maybe We Don’t Need to Watch It All – Right Now,” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 23rd, 2015.
“Stop Calling Superheroes Fascist,” The Atlantic, December 3rd, 2013.