Dominic Clarke
PhD Candidate
Dissertation
Supervisor: Josslyn Luckett
My dissertation focuses on San Francisco based underground filmmaker Curt McDowell. Making films over a two-decade span, McDowell's works are both timeless and yet capture a specific moment in LGBTQ history, one specifically demarcated by AIDS. Mostly forgotten at this time, McDowell's films pushed gender and genre boundaries, and my analysis places them in conversation with other figures and milestones of LGBTQ film history.
Bio
Dominic Clarke is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies. His research focuses on American underground/experimental cinema made by LGBTQ people, the essay film, and LGBTQ history. His conference presentations include an analysis of experimental filmmaker Curt McDowell's film Loads at the Yale Graduate Student Conference. His current research project places Curt McDowell in the sociopolitical and aesthetic environment of San Francisco during the height of the AIDS crisis.