Institutional Affiliation
Colorado State University
Film and Media Studies
Education
Ph.D., University of California Los Angeles
Research Interests
Cinema Studies; Transnationalism; Television Studies; Global Media Industries; Genre Studies; Narrative Studies
Regional and Thematic Interests
East Asia
Media Studies
Profile
David Scott Diffrient is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, specializing in American film history, genre studies (with an emphasis on comedy, fantasy, horror, and science fiction), television studies, cult fandom and taste cultures, East Asian popular culture, and postmodernity. Besides serving on the editorial board of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, he has published articles in Cinema Journal, Film & History, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Post Script, and other journals. His first book, a manuscript on the television series M*A*S*H, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2008. He is the co-editor of a volume on the "screwball" TV series Gilmore Girls (Syracuse University Press, 2010), and is currently collaborating on a book about transnational Korean cinema. He is also modifying his dissertation — the first scholarly study of internationally produced anthology and omnibus films — for publication.
Selected Publications
2014. David Scott Diffrient, “The Sandwich Man: History, Episodicity, and Serial Conditioning in a Taiwanese Omnibus Film,” Asian Cinema, Vol. 25, no. 1 (April).
2013. David Scott Diffrient, “The Face(s) of Korean Horror Film: Toward a Cinematic Physiognomy of Affective Extremes,” in Alison Peirse and Daniel Martin, eds., Korean Horror Cinema (Edinburgh University Press), 114-130.
2012. David Scott Diffrient, “If You Were Me: Human Rights Discourses and Transnational Crossings in South Korean Omnibus Films,” Transnational Cinemas, Vol. 3, no. 1 (May): 93-114.
2011. David Scott Diffrient, “Beyond Tokenism and Tricksterism: Bobby Lee, MADtv, and the De(con)structive Impulse of Korean American Comedy,” Velvet Light Trap 67 (Spring): 41-56.
2010. David Scott Diffrient, “Over that Hill: Cinematic Adaptations and Cross-Cultural Remakes, from Depression-Era America to Post-war Korea,” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 1.2 (Spring): 105-127.
2009. David Scott Diffrient, “No Quarter(s), No Camel(s), No Exit(s): Motel Cactus and the Low Heterotopias of Seoul,” in David B. Clarke and Valerie Crawford Pfannhauser, eds., Moving Pictures/Stopping Places: Hotels and Motels on Film (Rowman & Littlefield), 272-323.
2008. David Scott Diffrient, “From Three Godfathers to Tokyo Godfathers: Signifying Social Change in a Transnational Context,” in Leon Hunt and Wing-Fai Leung, eds., East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (I.B. Tauris), 153-171.
2008. David Scott Diffrient, “Drift and Duration in Hong Sang-soo’s The Day a Pig Fell into the Well,” Post Script, 28.2 (Summer): 82-99.
2007. David Scott Diffrient, “Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: The Politics of Memory and Modernity in the Fractured Films of Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo” (co-authored with Hye Seung Chung), in Frances Gateward, ed., Seoul Searching: Contemporary Korean Cinema and Society (SUNY Press), 115-139.
2005. David Scott Diffrient, “Interethnic Romance and Political Reconciliation in Asako in Ruby Shoes” (co-authored with Hye Seung Chung), in Julian Stringer and Chi-Yun Shin, eds., New Korean Cinema (University of Edinburgh Press), 193-209.
2005. David Scott Diffrient, “Han’guk Heroism: Cinematic Spectacle and the Postwar Cultural Politics of Red Muffler,” in Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann, eds., Gender, Genre and National Cinema: South Korean Golden Age Melodrama (Wayne State University Press), 151-183.
205. David Scott Diffrient, “‘Military Enlightenment’ for the Masses: Genre and Cultural Intermixing in South Korea’s Golden Age War Films,” Cinema Journal, 45.1 (Fall): 22-49.