Rick Altman

Rick Altman is Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa, where he has taught since 1974. He is an Angier B. Duke Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a Danforth Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, a Cornell University Society for the Humanities Fellow, a University of Iowa Faculty Scholar, an NEH Fellow, and an ACLS Fellow.

He has published extensively on film sound, including Cinema/Sound (1980), Sound Theory/Sound Practice (1992), The State of Sound Studies (1999), The Sounds of Early Cinema (with Richard Abel, 2001), and Silent Film Sound (2004), and on Hollywood genres, including Genre: The Musical (1981), The American Film Musical (1987), and Film/Genre (1999). His articles and books have been translated into eighteen languages. His most recent book is A Theory of Narrative (Columbia UP, 2008).

In addition to performances of his Living Nickelodeon program (which recreates the programming and audience participation atmosphere of an early film theater), he is currently working on a book entitled Hollywood Sound, which will recount the process by which the Hollywood industry developed a standardized approach to film sound.