City College of New York (B.A., 1969)
Purdue University (M.A., 1971)
State University of New York at Buffalo (Ph.D., 1975)

TEACHING POSITIONS:

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Purdue (1969-71)
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Buffalo (1971-74)
Visiting Instructor, SUNY College at Fredonia (1/75-6/75)
Assistant Professor of English, Queens College (1975-1980)
Associate Professor of English, Queens College (1981-1986)
Associate Professor of English (Visiting), University of Colorado (1983-84)
Professor of English, Queens College (1987-)
Maitre de Conference Associé (Visiting), Université de Paris VIII, 1992-1993

PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS

Patterns in Popular Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
The New Gods: Psyche and Symbol in Popular Art. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1980.
American Voices: A Thematic/ Rhetorical Reader. New York: Harper & Row,1988.
The Bosom Serpent: Folklore and Popular Art. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1988.
Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho". New York: Simon & Schuster/ Pocket Books, 1989.
Deranged. New York: Simon & Schuster/ Pocket Books, 1990.
Discoveries: FIfty Stories of the Quest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Dying Breath (Novel). New York: Simon & Schuster/ Pocket Books, 1992.
Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1994.
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1996. Outcry (Novel). New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1997.
Bestial. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1998.
Nevermore (Novel). New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 2000.
For Reel. New York: Penguin Putnam/Berkley Books, 2000.
Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 2000.
The Hum Bug (Novel). New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 2001.
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer. New York: Simon Schuster/ Pocket Books. 2003.
The Serial Killer Files. New York: Random House/Ballantine Books, 2004.
The Mask of Red Death (novel). New York: Random House/Ballantine Books. 2004.
Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin's, 2005.

ARTICLES

"The Eye and the Nerve: A Psychological Reading of James Dickey's Deliverance," in Seasoned Authors for a New Season: The Search for Standards in Popular Writing, ed. Louis Filler (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1980), pp. 4-19. Reprinted in Struggling for Wings: The Art of James Dickey, ed. Robert Kirschten (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 176-193.
"Fetishism, Consumerism, and the Flight from Women," in Fetishes and Fetishism in American Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1982), pp. 45-53.
"Bartleby the Chronometer," Studies in Short Fiction, XIX (1982), pp. 359-366.
"The Velvet Paw: A Note on the Cat Image in Melville's Fiction," Melville Society Extracts, 55 (1983), pp. 11-12.
"The Bloody Chamber: Terror Films, Fairy Tales, and Taboo," in Forbidden Fruits: Taboo and Tabooism in Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1984), pp. 67-82. Reprinted in Gender, Language and Myth: Essays on Popular Narrative, ed. Glenwood Irons. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, pp. 233-251.
"The Bosom Serpent: Folklore and Popular Art," The Georgia Review, XXXIX (1985), pp. 93-108.
"B Movies," in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, ed. Jack Sullivan. (New York: Viking, 1986), pp. 18-20.
"Special Effects," in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, pp. 397-399.
"Symbols of Initiation in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," in Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Louise Carus Mahdi. (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Press, 1987), pp. 67-78.
"The Goblin Child: Folklore Symbolism in Popular Art," in Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne and Marshall Fishwick. (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1990), pp. 39-48.
"If This Movie Seems Familiar," New York Times, 5 Oct. 1990, Sec. 1, p. 37.
"Popular Culture Symposium," in C.G. Jung and the Humanities, ed. Karin Barnaby and Pellegrino D'Arcierno (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 76-90.
"Leatherstocking in 'Nam: Rambo, Platoon, and the American Frontier Myth," Journal of Popular Culture, 24 (Spring 1991), pp, 17-26.
"The Lore of Gore Goes Way Back," New York Newsday, 3 May 1991, p. 58.
"Leatherstocking on Steroids," New York Newsday, 31 July 1991, p. 41.
"Reinventing 'The Same Old Story': A Conversation on Popular Art," Quadrant: The Journal of Contemporary Jungian Thought, 24 (Fall 1991), pp. 65-74.
"The Serial Killer is Our Dracula," Los Angeles Times, 2 April 1992, Sec. A, #p. 11.
"Joseph Campbell and the Vanilla-Coated Temple," in The Uses of Comparative Mythology:Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell, ed. Kenneth Golden. New York: Garland, 1993, pp. 179-192.
"The Vigilante Soul," International Herald Tribune, 31 March 1993, p. 33.
"Skin Deep: Folk Tales, Face Lifts, and The Silence of the Lambs," LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 5 (Spring, 1994), 19-27.
"Natural Born Mania for Mayhem," Los Angeles Times, 16 September 1994, Sec. B, p. 9.
"Clowning Is a Longtime Tradition," Los Angeles Times, 6 February 1995, Sec. F, p. 3.
"The Movies Made Me Do It," New York Times, 3 December 1995, Sec. 4, p. 15.
"Violent Movies Act As a Safety Valve," Hartford Courant, 18 December 1995, Section D, pp. 1 and 4.
"A Short, Corrective History of Violence in Popular Culture," New York Times Magazine, 7 July 1996, pp. 32-33.
"Myths, Monsters, and the Success of 'Independence Day,'" Los Angeles Times, 5 August 1996, Sec. F, p. 4.
"Yesterday, All His Troubles Seemed So Far Away," Los Angeles Times, 9 February 1997,Sec. E, p. 2.
"Carny of the Gods: Joe Coleman's Savage Archetypes," in Original Sin: The Visionary Art of Joe Coleman. New York: Heck Edition, pp. 43-122.
"A Tragedy Repeated in History," New York Times, 23 May 1998, Sec. 1, p. 27.
"The Ghoulish Gallery of Professor Mombooze-o," Brooklyn Bridge, Sept.-Oct. 1999, pp. 72-77.
"Edward Gein," American National Biography, Vol. 8 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 830-832.
"When Crime Becomes Art," New York Times, 1 July 1999, Sec. 1, p. 28.
"Myth, Archetype, and Chopper Chicks in Zombietown: What We've Learned from Leslie,' in Leslie Fiedler and American Culture, ed. Steven G. Kellman and Irving Malin (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), pp. 130-35.
"Serial Killers,"in Violence in America, Vol. 3, ed. Ronald Gottesman (New York: Scribner's, 2000), pp. 133-137.
"Introduction," Panzram: A Journal of Murder, ed. Thomas Gaddis and James O. Long (Los Angeles: Amok, 2002), pp. 1-3.

MISC.

"Mirror, Mirror," teleplay for The Cosby Mysteries, broadcast on NBC 11/29/94.
"Slime" (short story), in Phobias, ed. by Wendy Webb et al. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1994, pp. 122-146.
"He Knows When You've Been Screaming" (short story), in More Phobias, ed. By Wendy Webb et al. New York: Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1995, pp. 194-210.
"Castoff," teleplay for Law & Order, broadcast on NBC 1/28/98.