PAUL J. NIEMEYER

Assistant Professor of English

Department of Languages and Literatures

5201 University Boulevard,

A.J and G.A Pellegrino Hall 312B

Texas A & M International University

Laredo,

TX 78041-1900

 

EMail: pniemeyer@tamiu.edu

Ph: (956) 326-2645

Fax:  (956) 326-2469

PAUL NIEMEYER

is a

TTHA

 Vice President

&

Director of the Hardy Association's

FILM PAGE

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS:  

Seeing Hardy: Film and Television Adaptations of the Fiction of Thomas    Hardy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003)

 

"Turning Japan into England (And Vice-Versa): Cross-Culturalism and Loss of  Identity in The Mikado" (in progress).

Education

2000: PhD, Uni. Arizona 

1995: MA, Uni. Arizona. 

1989: BA, Uni. Arizona

2007- TAMIU

Presentations

Panel Moderator:

"Hardy, Nature and Culture," TTHA, Hardy at Yale conference, 2007

 

"Henchard in the Doorway: Looking Backward and Forward in Two Adaptations of The Mayor of Casterbridge." (HAY, 2007)

 

"Turning Japan into England (And Vice-Versa): Cross-Culturalism and Loss of Identity in The Mikado."  Hawaii Int. Conf. on Arts and Humanities, 2004

 

"Howards End: Maintaining the Internal Empire."  New Directions in Critical Theory Conference, 1995.

 

"'All Men Wou'd Be Sold': Dryden's Amphitryon and Royal Prerogative." ASECS, 1995

 

Panel Moderator:

"The City."  Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference,  2005

Dissertation

                  Seeing Hardy: The Critical and Cinematic Construction of Thomas Hardy and His Novels

                  Director: Gerald Monsman; Committee: Suresh Raval, Charles Scruggs.

This study examines how the literary and theoretical criticism of Thomas Hardy's novels, as well as the film and television adaptations of these works, have all contributed to the construction of the cultural "image" of Hardy as a writer and as an individual.  The dissertation draws upon Barthean theories on language and intertextuality to examine first how literary and film texts related to one another, and then how literary texts   may be transferred to film.  Through close readings of the original novels and their film versions, the dissertation argues that the critical histories have become as much a part of Hardy's novels as what Hardy wrote, and that the filmmakers more often than not use criticism as interpretative "lenses" through which they make their adaptations.  Ultimately, critics and filmmakers have codified certain ways of seeing Hardy and his works, all of which influence how his novels are read.