Seminar: Devil in a Blue Dress

The bone-deep disillusionment of postwar film noir becomes a powerful vehicle to explore America’s racial injustices in Carl Franklin’s richly atmospheric Devil in a Blue Dress, an adaptation of the hard-boiled novel by Walter Mosley.

Wellesley College English Professor Vernon L. Shetley, who is writing a book on post-1970s film noir, will give an overview of the film.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Vernon L. Shetley is an English Professor at Wellesley College. Shetley studies and teaches American poetry and film, focusing particularly on contemporary poetry and classic Hollywood cinema. He is currently working on a book on film noir from the 1970s to the present, which focuses on the representation of economics within these films. Shetley is particularly interested in the way that trust, and the lack of trust, shape the economy of crime in neo-noir filmmaking; and in the way that the cinematic private detective embodies a transformation in the role of the professions within the larger economy.