Robert James "Bob" Niemi (born April 17, 1955, died September 17, 2022) from Fitchburg, Massachusetts) was an American literary scholar, literary critic and author. From 1990 to 2022 he was professor of English at Saint Michael's College in Colchester.
Robert Niemi was born in 1955 in Fitchburg as one of three sons of Alfred A. Niemi and Anita Mary (Cormier) Niemi. [1] [2]
Niemi attended Fitchburg High School until 1973. In 1977 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English at University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1978 he received the MSLS at Columbia University. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst he graduated with a Master of Arts in English in 1988 and with his dissertation Music Out of an Abyss: A Critical Study of the Fiction of Weldon Kees he graduated with a Ph.D. in English in 1991. [3]
Since 1990 Niemi taught American Studies, American literature and cultural history, film studies, critical theory and popular culture studies at the Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont. In September 2012 the faculty awarded him the Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award. [4]
He has published several non-fiction books on literary, film and popular culture issues. Niemi has written books about Weldon Kees, Russell Banks, the Beat Generation, filmmaker Robert Altman as part of the Directors' Cuts series of Columbia University Press [5] and the genre of the War film with his genre overview 100 Great War Movies: The Real History Behind the Film. [6] He also published articles, book reviews and encyclopedic entries.
Niemi was married to Constance "Connie" Dufour and lived in Essex Junction, Vermont. [1] He died September 17, 2022, aged 67. [7]
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 1971 American revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman and starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. The screenplay by Altman and Brian McKay is based on the 1959 novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. Altman referred to it as an "anti-Western" film because it ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions. It was filmed in British Columbia, Canada in the fall and winter of 1970, and premiered on June 24, 1971.
Nashville is a 1975 American musical comedy drama film directed and produced by Robert Altman. The film follows various people involved in the country and gospel music industry in Nashville, Tennessee, over the five-day period leading up to a gala concert for a populist outsider running for president on the Replacement Party ticket.
Robert Edmund Cormier was an American writer and journalist, known for his deeply pessimistic novels, many of which were written for young adults. Recurring themes include abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal, and conspiracy. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win.
Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, playwright, jazz pianist, short story writer, and filmmaker. Despite his brief career, Kees is considered an important mid-twentieth-century poet of the Beat generation, and peer of John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell. His work has been immensely influential on subsequent generations of poets writing in English and other languages and his collected poems have been included in many anthologies. Harold Bloom lists the publication of Kees's first book The Last Man (1943) as an important event in the chronology of his textbook Modern American Poetry as well as a book worthy of his Western Canon.
The Independent Spirit Awards, originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards, and later as the Film Independent Spirit Awards, are awards presented annually in Santa Monica, California, to independent filmmakers. Founded in 1984, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986. The ceremony is produced by Film Independent, a not-for-profit arts organization that used to produce the LA Film Festival. Film Independent members vote to determine the winners of the Spirit Awards.
James Freeman Clarke was an American minister, theologian and author.
Popeye is a 1980 American musical comedy film directed by Robert Altman and produced by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions. It is based on E. C. Segar's Popeye comics character. The script was written by Jules Feiffer, and stars Robin Williams as Popeye the Sailor Man and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl. Its story follows Popeye's adventures as he arrives in the town of Sweethaven.
A historical drama is a dramatic work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents historical events and characters with varying degrees of fictional elements such as creative dialogue or fictional scenes which aim to compress separate events or illustrate a broader factual narrative. The biographical film is a type of historical drama which generally focuses on a single individual or well-defined group. Historical dramas can include romances, adventure films, and swashbucklers.
Jerome Charles Weintraub was an American film producer, talent manager and actor whose television films won him three Emmys.
3 Women is a 1977 American psychological drama film written, produced and directed by Robert Altman and starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule. Set in a dusty California desert town, it depicts the increasingly bizarre relationship between an adult woman (Duvall), her teenage roommate and co-worker (Spacek) and a middle-aged pregnant woman (Rule).
Robert Pirosh was an American screenwriter and film director. He is most known for his war and military-themed works, inspired by his experiences as a U.S. Army infantryman during World War II. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Battleground (1949), a semi-autobiographical account the Battle of the Bulge. He was nominated for a second Oscar for Go for Broke! (1951), a film about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Vincent & Theo is a 1990 biographical drama film about the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and his brother Theo (1857–1891), an art dealer. While Vincent van Gogh's artworks are now famous, he was essentially unrecognized in his lifetime, and survived on his brother's charity. The film was directed by Robert Altman, and starred Tim Roth and Paul Rhys in the title roles.
Austin Edmund Quigley is the former Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University, Lucy G. Moses Professor, and Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University, in New York City, and the recipient of the 2008 Alexander Hamilton Medal, Columbia College's highest honor. He is also a member of the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies and of the Columbia University Doctoral Program Subcommittee on Theatre, has served on the editorial boards of Modern Drama, New Literary History, The Pinter Review.
The woman's film is a film genre that includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray stereotypical women's concerns such as domestic life, family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance. These films were produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II. Although Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific stars.
Ann Cathleen Bermingham is an American art historian and educator. A specialist on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art, Bermingham is Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Barbara Zecchi is a feminist film scholar, film critic, videoessayist, and film festival curator. She is professor of Film Studies and director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.