Melissa Croteau, Ph.D.

Dr. Melissa Croteau is a Professor of Film Studies and Literature at California Baptist University. Her research, teaching, and publications center on global cinema (specializing in Japan and India), film theory and history, aesthetics, intermediality, and early modern British literature and culture. She has presented on these subjects at numerous international conferences and events over the past two decades and has published in Shakespeare Survey, Cahiers Élisabéthains, Shakespeare Bulletin, and several other journals and edited volumes. Her books include the monographs Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces (Routledge, 2022) and Re-forming Shakespeare: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Bard in Millennial Film and Popular Culture (McFarland, 2013), and a co-edited volume Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays on Visions of Chaos and Revelation in Recent Film Adaptations (2009). She is currently writing Shakespeare and Film Theory for Arden/Bloomsbury.

World Cinema
Film Theory and Criticism
Film History
Major Directors
Sundance Film Festival
Japanese Cinema
Indian Cinema
French Cinema
Adaptation and Intertextuality
Independent Film and Counter-Cinema
Introduction to Film Studies
Literature and Film
Shakespeare on Film
Renaissance Literature and Culture
Literary Theory
Women Writers/Women's Voices
Shakespeare
Humanities

Global Cinema, Film and Aesthetic Theory, Japanese Cinema, Indian Cinema, Screen Shakespeares, Critical Theory

Prof. Croteau has taught at a dozen institutions of higher education over the past twenty-eight years, including all levels of the California state system (UC, Cal State, and community college). She also has taught at a number of private universities and colleges, such as Woodbury University, Geneva College, and Biola University. She has been teaching at CBU since 2008.

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS:
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema: Framing Sacred Spaces. Routledge, 2024.

Re-forming Shakespeare: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Bard in Millennial Film and Popular Culture.
Lambert Academic Publishing, 2013.

Co-editor of Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays on Vision of Chaos and Revelation in Recent Film Adaptations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009.

Editor of Reel Histories: Studies in American Film. Los Angeles: Press Americana, 2008.

In Progress:
Shakespeare and Film Theory. Bloomsbury/Arden, projected publication 2025.

BOOK CHAPTERS & JOURNAL ARTICLES
Forthcoming: “Leave the Brits, take the Shakespeare: Echoing King Lear, Banishing British Blood, and Indigenizing Shakespeare in Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981),” for a volume on crisis and King Lear in performance in Bloomsbury’s “Global Shakespeare Inverted” series (pub. 2024).

"Guns, Rasa, and Roses: Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela (2013), a ‘Desi’ Romeo and Juliet,” in Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet. Ed. Victoria Bladen, Sarah Hatchuel, and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

“The Spirit of Shaolin on Screen: Buddhism and Cultural Politics in Chinese Cinema,” co-authored with Zhang Xin (Beijing Normal University), in Introduction to Buddhist East Asia: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Ed. by James McRae and Robert Scott, Syracuse University Press, 2023.

“Screening Dreamy LA: Reading Genre in Casey Wilder Mott’s Hollywood A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2018),” in The Arden Research Companion to Shakespeare and Adaptation. Ed. by Diana Henderson and Stephen O’Neill, Arden/Bloomsbury, 2022.

“Bollywood: Macbeth, Othello,” in Shakespeare and Emotion. Ed. Katharine Craik, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 136-50.

“Nature versus Nurture/Wilderness versus Words: Syncretizing Binaries and the Getting of Wisdom in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007),” in A Companion to the Biopic. Ed. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek, Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.

“Trespassing on Sacred Ground: The Politics of Religion in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (2003),” in The Shakespeare Newsletter, vol. 69, no. 2, 2020. URL: https://shakespearenewsletter.com/trespassing-on-sacred-ground-the-politics-of-religion-in-vishal-bhardwajs-maqbool/.

“Ancient Aesthetics and Current Conflicts: Indian Rasa Theory and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014),” in Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge UP), vol. 72, 2019, pp. 171-82.

“Wicked Humans and Weeping Buddhas: (Post)Humanism and Hell in Kurosawa’s Ran,” in Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear. Ed. Sarah Hatchuel, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, and
Victoria Bladen. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

“Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté Opera of Ambroise Thomas: L’éclat at the End of the Tunnel,” in Cahiers Élisabéthains, vol. 99, no. 1, 2019 (IRCL, France; SAGE Pub.).

“Surfing with Juliet: The Shakespearean Dialectics of Disney’s Teen Beach Movie (2013),” in Shakespeare / Not Shakespeare. Ed. Christy Desmet, Natalie Loper, and Jim Casey. Palgrave, 2018, pp. 241-58.

“‘I am not what I am’: Othello and Role-Playing in Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis (1945),” on Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia. Ed. Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin and Patricia Dorval. Pub. by L’Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l’Age Classique et les Lumières (IRCL), 2016. URL: http://www.shakscreen.org/analysis/othello_role-playing_carne/

"London's Burning: Remembering the Gunpowder Plot and 17th Century Conflict in V for Vendetta," in The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time. Ed. Gregory Semenza. Palgrave, 2010, pp. 89-102.

“Introduction: Beginning at the Ends,” in Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays on Visions of Chaos and Revelation in Recent Film Adaptations. Ed. Melissa Croteau and Carolyn Jess-Cooke. McFarland,
2009, pp. 1-27.

“Celluloid Revelations: Millennial Culture and Dialogic ‘Pastiche’ in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000)” and “Introduction: Beginning at the Ends,” in Apocalyptic Shakespeare: Essays on Visions of Chaos and Revelation in Recent Film Adaptations. Ed. Melissa Croteau and Carolyn Jess-Cooke. McFarland,
2009, pp. 110-31.

"Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business (1987): A Socialist Shakespearean Film Noir Comedy," in Shakespeare's World/World Shakespeares: The Selected Proceedings of the VIII World Shakespeare Congress Brisbane 2006. Ed. Richard Fotheringham and Christa Jansohn. University of Delaware Press, 2008, pp. 193-205.

PRESENTATIONS (recent)
“Guns, Rasa, and Roses: Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Ram-Leela (2013), a ‘Desi’ Romeo and Juliet.”
Shakespeare on Screen in the Digital Era Conference. Montpellier, France. 26-28 September 2019.

“‘Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight?’: Bollywood, Shakespeare, and the Crossing of Emotional and Generic Boundaries in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool and Omkara.” European Shakespeare Research Association Conference. Rome, Italy. 9-12 July 2019.

“Tinseltown Histories: Casey Wilder Mott’s Indie A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2018) in Hollywood.” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference. Washington, DC. 17-20 April 2019.

“Cosmic Wholeness: Transcending Disintegration in I Wish (Hirokazu Kore-eda 2011).” Asian Studies Development Program National Conference, Nashville, TN. 7-9 March 2019.

“Shakespeare and Posthuman Worlds in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven — An Ecocritical Excursion.” Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies. Guadalajara, Spain. 9-11 May 2018.

“Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté of Ambroise Thomas: L’éclat at the End of the Tunnel.” European Shakespeare Research Association Conference. Gdansk, Poland. 27-30 July 2017.

“Ancient Aesthetics and Current Conflicts: Indian Rasa Theory and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014).” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference. Atlanta, GA. 5-8 April 2017.

“Wicked Humans and Weeping Buddhas: Humanism and Hell in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985).” World Shakespeare Congress. Stratford-upon-Avon & London, UK. 30 July – 6 August 2016.

“Sacred Space, Cosmic Trees, and Labyrinths: Hierophany in Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1958).” Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference. New Orleans, LA. 23-26 March 2016.

AWARDS AND HONORS
National Endowment for the Humanities Institute Fellow, “Buddhist East Asia: The Interplay of Religion, the Arts, and Politics,” The East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 28 – June 22, 2018.

Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity/CCCU Faculty Development/Collaborative Research Seminar Member, “Society and the Rule of Law in China,” Shanghai and Beijing, China, 2-16 June 2011.

National Endowment for the Humanities Institute Fellow, India: Past and Present, July 2008