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I am a New Yorker by birth, a Canadian by good fortune, and an Italian in my dreams. To nourish the dreams, I have spent a good deal of time in Rome and in Tuscany. My PhD is from the University of Florida in English literature, though I wrote my dissertation on Federico Fellini. From 1972-75, I taught at the University of Kentucky (American literature primarily), where I started a film program within the English department. From 1975-87, I taught at the University of Manitoba (primarily film but some literature). In 1987 I moved to ���Ҵ�ý, where I taught film in relation to postmodernity, cultural studies, poststructuralist theory, and gender, with a strong emphasis on Italian culture and the interrelationships among Italian film, Hollywood, and American culture. I taught my final course at Queen’s in the fall of 2024.

My current interests embrace the writings of Alfred North Whitehead, Steven Shaviro, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari—all in the context of reimagining our relation to our world and environment. I am involved in projects on James Hillman and Fellini and on Fellini’s Book of Dreams, as well as helping to find a permanent exhibition space, ideally in Italy, for the contents of Fellini’s Cinecittà office, which by a strange alchemy have ended up in Toronto.

My research till now has been devoted to Italian, American, and Italian-American cinema, with a frequent focus on Fellini. I have published five books on Fellini’s films in English and have contributed to Italian volumes on the director. I provided the audio commentary, along with the late Peter Brunette, for the Criterion Collection’s Amarcord, as well as a solo commentary for Criterion’s Roma and Il Bidone. All three are part of Criterion's boxed set honouring the centenary (2020) of Fellini’s birth.

With the late Marguerite Waller and Marita Gubareva, I published Wiley Blackwell's A Companion to Federico Fellini (2020, 575 pp.) In the same year, I published Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern (Intellect/U. of Chicago Press), an updated version of my 1996 book on the director.

Most recently, I have done an episode of Ken Barrett’s Brainland podcast, titled “Federico Fellini’s Dreamwork” (December 2025); been invited to provide the closing keynote address for the 2026 Journal of Italian Cinema and Media conference in Rome; and asked to lecture on Fellini’s Book of Dreams in June at the Museo Fellini in Rimini.

In terms of non-Fellini work, I have edited, with Amy Hough-Dugdale and Marita Gubareva, a special issue on Tonino Guerra for the Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies (2023). Guerra was an esteemed screenwriter for, among others, Antonioni, Fellini, and Andrei Tarkovsky, as well as a noted poet, novelist, visual artist, and environmentalist. My Wiley Blackwell Companion to Italian Cinema (edited volume, 648 pp.) was published in May 2017. I have written on Dario Argento, Michelangelo Antonioni, Lina Wertmüller, Mario Camerini, Roberto Rossellini, William Friedkin, Sam Peckinpah, Michael Cimino, horror cinema, experimental cinema, the Italian sword-and-sandal film, and Canadian cinema.

In terms of non-scholarly work, from 1996 to 1998 I served as president of the ���Ҵ�ý Faculty Association, and I contributed to the association in various other capacities before and after. I have been board chairman of a Montessori school and day care dedicated to providing free tuition for children, board vice chair of a neighborhood housing corporation, and vice president of a community development association.

I have been the single parent of two daughters, now grown. Tyler is a former music-label founder (Three Gut Records) and an artist, parent, graphic designer, and author of the children’s books Bill Bowerbird, Where Are You Now? and (with Random House, US) The Last Loose Tooth. She has recently completed her degree in art therapy and is a registered psychotherapist. Wylie directed the Gail Appel Institute of the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre (Toronto), dedicated to the advancement of children’s and families’ mental health. She managed the Centre’s transition when it became part of the Hospital for Sick Children. She has an MBA from Queen’s University and, after working for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario and the Brookfield Institute for Innovation (Toronto Metropolitan University), she has opened her own firm as an educator, leadership and talent coach, and consultant, doing substantial work for the Industrial Relations Centre at Queen’s. I am the adoptive parent of a Caribbean son Gabriel, whose physical stature even as a young child earned him the nickname "Ercolino" or "little Hercules" among my Italian friends. He is a retired university football player and now a bodybuilder and aspiring firefighter. Once he reached a certain size, he began bequeathing to me the clothes he outgrew. Fortunately, he is very stylish; unfortunately, his clothes are now way too large. On the other hand, he is a brilliant fashion designer, and his creations have been responsible for several dad makeovers.