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After earning a B.S. at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. McCombe worked as a clinical chemist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. While there, he completed additional course work in English, art history and film, before enrolling as a graduate student in English at Pitt. Later, he completed a doctorate in British Literature at The Ohio State University. At UD, Dr. McCombe regularly teaches courses in literature, film and composition, as well as special topics courses on how scholars read and write about popular musicians, including the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan. For more than a decade, Dr. McCombe has also held a leadership position in the University Honors Program—initially as Associate Director for Fellowships and Graduate School Advising, and then later as Director.

The author of more than two dozen peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book chapters, Dr. McCombe is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Hollywood Malaise: American Film in the Crisis of Confidence, 1976-1983. The book explores how Hollywood films depict and respond to what President Jimmy Carter deemed a national “crisis of confidence” in 1979, and what Carter’s political opponents referred to as “the Malaise.” Over the course of seven thematic chapters, the book analyzes how a wide range of films connect to issues central to the “crisis of confidence,” including depleted energy resources, calls for fiscal austerity, anxieties regarding the American family, and the decreasing visibility of people of color in popular culture at the turn of the eighties.

Faculty perspective

"I had never visited UD prior to my on-campus interview, nor had I significant exposure to the Marianists or Catholic higher education. But now I'm unable to imagine working anywhere else: I love the campus community, and I'm particularly happy in a department in which I'm encouraged to pursue my diverse teaching and research interests."

Courses taught

• British Modernism
• Survey of British Literature, 1800-Present
• The New Hollywood: Film in the 1970s
• Cool Britannia: Contemporary British Literature and Film
• Film Theory
• British Film
• The Beatles in Literature and Film
• Bob Dylan as Literature
• Major British Authors: Shakespeare, Austen, Wilde, and Woolf
• Hollywood in the Age of Anxiety, 1945-1963
• Film Genres: Screwball Comedy and Film Noir
• Shakespeare, Cinema, and Society
• Berry Scholars First-Year English Seminar
• Honors Freshman Writing Seminar
• College Composition I (CORE Program)
• College Composition II (CORE Program)

Research interests

• Modern British Literature
• Film Studies
• Music and Literature
• Shakespeare

Selected publications and presentations

PUBLICATIONS

Book Manuscript (in-progress)

Hollywood Malaise: American Film in the Crisis of Confidence, 1976-1983

With the arrival of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), Hollywood entered a new era marked by the demise of the “New Hollywood” auteur and the rise of the blockbuster. One context for this changing landscape of aesthetics and business practices is the economic recession and cultural upheaval of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  My book explores how Hollywood films depict and respond to what President Jimmy Carter deemed a national “crisis of confidence” in 1979, and what Carter’s political opponents referred to as “the Malaise.” Over the course of seven thematic chapters, I explore how a wide range of films from various genres—both canonical and lesser-known—connect to issues central to the “crisis of confidence,” including depleted energy resources, calls for fiscal austerity, anxieties regarding the American family, and the decreasing visibility of people of color in popular culture.

Book Chapters

“Bob Dylan’s ‘Westerns’: Border Crossings and the Flight from ‘the Domestic.’” Polyvocal Dylan. Eds. Joshua Toth and Nduka Otiono. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019.

“‘Getting Better All the Time’: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of Beatles Mythology.” Teaching the Beatles to Undergraduates. Eds. Paul Jenkins and Hugh Jenkins. London: Routledge, 2018.

“Losing the ‘Literature’ in ‘Bob Dylan as Literature.” Professing Dylan. Ed. Frances Hunter. Memphis: Phillips Memphis, 2016.

“Hair Metal and Authenticity in the 21st-Century Heavy Metal Canon Wars.” Toni-Matti Karjalainen and Kimi Karki, eds.  Proceedings of the Modern Heavy Metal Conference, Aalto University, Helsinki, 2015. 

“‘Oh I See…’: The Birds and the Culmination of Hitchcock’s Hyper-Romantic Vision.” Cinema Journal 44 (2005): 64-80.  Rpt. in A Hitchcock Reader. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 264-79.

Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

‘“David Bowie and the Myth of the ‘Berlin Trilogy’: Tearing Down Musical Walls in the 1970s.”  The Journal of Popular Culture 50:5 (2017): 949-67. 

“Authenticity, Artifice, Ideology: Heavy Metal Video and MTV’s ‘Second Launch,’  1983-1985.” Metal Music Studies 2 (2016): 405-11.

“‘Common People’: Realism, Class Difference, and the Male Domestic Sphere in Nick Hornby’s Collision with Britpop.” Modern Fiction Studies 60:1 (2014): 165-84.

“‘Trying so hard to be like the big boys’: Elvis Costello Explores Male Aggression and Militarism in Armed Forces.” The Journal of Popular Culture 46:6 (2013): 1198-1216.

“The Stephen Dedalus Blues: Travel, Trains and a Blues Sensibility in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” James Joyce Quarterly 48:3 (2011): 477-94. 

“Minstrelsy, Masculinity, and ‘Bob Dylan’ as Text in I’m Not There.”  POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities 30 (2011): 12-25.

“Not ‘Only Sleeping’: The Beatles and a Neo-Romantic Aesthetic of Indolence.”  Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 44 (2011): 137-52.

“Henry James, Shakespeare’s Biography, and the Question of National Identity in ‘The Birthplace’ and ‘The Introduction to The Tempest.’”  The Henry James Review 31 (2010): 169-87.

“‘A Complete Loser’: Masculinity and its Discontents in Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and This Year’s Model.”   Journal of Popular Music Studies 21 (2009): 192-212.

“Cleopatra and Her Problems: T.S. Eliot and the Fetishization of Shakespeare’s Queen of the Nile.” Journal of Modern Literature 31 (2008): 23-38.

“Reinventing Bird: The Evolving Image of Charlie Parker on Screen.”  POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities 25 (2005): 23-38.

“‘Suiting the Action to the Word’: The 1908 Clarendon Tempest and the Evolution of a Narrative Silent Shakespeare.”  Literature Film Quarterly 33 (2005): 142-55.  

“‘Oh I See…’: The Birds and the Culmination of Hitchcock’s Hyper-Romantic Vision.” Cinema Journal 44.3 (2005): 64-80. 

 “‘Eternal Jazz’: Jazz Historiography and the Persistence of the Resurrection Myth.”  Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 36 (2004): 85-108.

“Picturing Jazz: Jazz Historiography and Children’s Literature.”  Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 28 (2003): 68-80.

“Besteglyster and Bradleyism: Stephen Dedalus’s Postcolonial Response to English Criticism.” James Joyce Quarterly 39 (2002): 717-33.      

“The End of (Anthony) Eden: Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Mid-Century Anglo-American Tensions.”  Twentieth Century Literature 48 (2002): 77-99.

“Empowering the Celtic Chieftain: W.B. Yeats, Cuchulain, and Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV.” Yeats Eliot Review 18:3 (2002): 22-36. 

“The Voyage Out: No Tempest in a Teapot: Woolf’s Revision of Shakespeare and Critique of Female Education.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 31 (2000): 275-306. 

“Toward an Objective Correlative: The Problem of Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet.” Literature/Film Quarterly 25 (1997): 125-131.

Reviews

Rev. of Catholic Modernists, English Nationalists by Timothy J. Sutton. James Joyce Literary Supplement 25 (2011): 18-19.

Rev. of Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison by Peter Mills. Popular Music and Society 34 (2011): 392-94.

Rev. of There Will Be Rainbows: A Biography of Rufus Wainwright by Kirk Lake. Popular Music and Society 34 (2011). 261-63.

Rev. of The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, ed. Kevin J.H. Dettmar. The Journal of Popular Culture 42 (2009): 956-57.

Rev. of Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883-1924, by Damon Franke. James Joyce Literary Supplement 22 (2008): 23-24.

CONFERENCES 

Selected presentations 

“`Who Do You Think You Are?’: Elvis Costello, The Juliet Letters, and the Epistolary Form in 1990s  Popular Music.” The Modern Language Association Convention, Chicago, Jan. 3-6, 2019.

“Automobility and the Album Art of Blue Note Records.” American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association Conference, Indianapolis, March 28-31, 2018.

“Bob Dylan’s “Westerns,” Border Crossings, and The Flight from the Domestic.” American Literature Association, Boston, May 25-28, 2017.

“Bowie the Berliner: An Immigrant Self-Fashions a New European Canon, 1976-78.” Modern Language Association International Symposium, Dusseldorf, Germany, June 23-25, 2016.

“Hair Metal and Authenticity in the Twenty-First Century Heavy Metal Canon Wars.” Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Culture Conference. International Society for Metal Music Studies. Helsinki, Finland, June 8-12, 2015.

“From Escape to Alienation: Automobile Imagery in Bruce Springsteen Songs, 1975-1980.” American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association Conference. Chicago, April 16-20, 2014.

“The Emergence of ‘Realist’ Metal Video on MTV, 1983-1985.” International Conference on Heavy Metal and Popular Culture. Bowling Green, Ohio, April 4-7, 2013.

“‘Taking the seedcake back from his mouth’: The Intertextual World of James Joyce and Kate Bush.”  The Modern Language Association Convention. Boston, Jan. 3-6, 2013.   

“Virginia Woolf in the Trailer Park: Isaac Brock, ‘Nowhere,’ WA and the Lonesome, Crowded West.” The Modern Language Association Convention. Seattle, Jan. 6-9, 2012.

“Common People”: Realism, Class Difference, and the Male Domestic Sphere in Nick Hornby’s Collision With Britpop.”  The Modern Language Association Convention. Los Angeles, Jan. 6-9, 2011.

“Keeping the Visionary Company: The Beatles and a Neo-Romantic Aesthetic of Indolence.” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900. Louisville, Ky., Feb. 18-20, 2010.

“Bob Dylan as a Literature/Film Text in I’m Not There.”  The 2009 Literature/Film Association Conference. Carlisle, Pa., Oct. 15-18, 2009.

“Henry James, Biographical Criticism, and the Question of National Identity in “The Introduction to The Tempest.” The Modern Language Association Convention. Chicago, Dec. 27-30, 2007.

“Staging Motherhood: Liz Phair, Tori Amos, and the Maternal Sublime.”  The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention. Cleveland, Nov. 8-11, 2007.

“’The Jagged Grain of a Brutal Experience’: The Blues Dialectic in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist.”  The 2007 International James Joyce Conference. Austin, Texas, June 13-17, 2007.

“Shakespeare was no Yank: James’s “The Birthplace,” Cultural Commodification, and Hating Americans.” The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention. Milwaukee, Nov. 10-13, 2005.

“The Stephen Dedalus Blues: Reading A Portrait of the Artist Through a Blues Aesthetic.”  Midwest Regional American Conference for Irish Studies. Milwaukee, Oct. 15-17, 2004.

“Reinventing Bird: A New View of Charlie Parker on Film.”  The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention.  Chicago, Nov. 7-9, 2003. 

“Picture Books, Jazz Biography, and Difference.”  The Modern Language Association Convention.  New York, Dec. 27-30, 2002.

“‘Suiting the Action to the Word’: The 1908 Clarendon Tempest and the Evolution of a Cinematic Silent Shakespeare in Britain.” The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention.  Minneapolis, Nov. 8-10, 2002.

“Intervening in the Writing Process: A Team Approach.”  The College English Association Conference.  Cincinnati, April 5-6, 2002.

“‘Eternal Jazz’: Jazz Historiography and the Persistence of the Resurrection Myth.”  The Modern Language Association Convention.  New Orleans, Dec. 26-30, 2001.

“Translating the Mythology of Jazz Through Children’s Literature.”  The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention.  Cleveland, Nov. 1-3, 2001.