Oral history interview with Hilary A. Hallett, 2014

Biographical Note

Hilary A. Hallett received her B.F.A from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 1990, and worked in film and theater before returning to the CUNY Graduate Center for her Ph.D., which she received in 2005. She specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history, both in the U.S. and in transatlantic perspective. Her research interests focus on the history of popular culture, comparative feminisms, and gender and sexuality. Her first book, Go West Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood, was published by the University of California Press in 2013. Go West! demonstrates how the transformation of the American film industry into Hollywood influenced the development of Los Angeles and broader ideas about women and sexual modernism. Her current project in 2015, The Syren Within: Elinor Glyn and the Invention of Glamour (under contract with Liveright-Norton), explores the transatlantic networks that supported the success of the English author, Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). With the publication of Three Weeks (1907), Glyn helped to invent the most commercially successful, and critically reviled, genre of twentieth-century English fiction: romance novels with an explicit erotic edge. Glyn's success as a writer and celebrity author brought her to Hollywood as an "Eminent Author," where she became one of the industry's most influential personalities during the 1920s. In addition to serving on the IRWGS Executive Board, Hallett is a member of the Undergraduate Education Committee (UNDED) for the Department of History

Scope and Contents

Hilary Hallett begins this interview by discussing her background in film production and history, citing David Nasaw as her mentor at CUNY. Having worked as a film producer and editor, Nasaw encouraged Hallett to explore the role of women in early Hollywood, a theme running throughout her scholarship. Hallett characterizes her position as a cultural historian within the Columbia University History department, and the ways in which she incorporates feminism into the classroom. She describes her favorite course to teach: Gender History and American Film. Hallett also discusses the position of IRWGS at Columbia and the challenges faced by the organization. Hallett addresses the impact of Alondra Nelson's and Alice-Kessler Harris' retirements. She characterizes IRWGS as a congenial intellectual environment and describes its dependence on the existence of strong female leaders. Hallett goes on to question the idea that all academics should be activists, citing the Feminist to the Core lecture series as a way for IRWGS to provoke a meaningful conversation within the academy

Subjects

• College teachers--Interviews.
• College teachers--United States--Political activity.
• Columbia University--Students.
• Columbia University. Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
• Feminism and higher education--United States.
• Feminist theory.
• Hallett, Hilary A., 1968---Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Juravich, Nicholas, interviewer.
• Motion pictures.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Women in motion pictures.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2014