Noël Carroll

{{infobox person

|name=Noël Carroll

|image=Noël Carroll (2005).jpg

|caption=Carroll in 2005

|birth_date={{birth year and age|1947}}

|nationality=American

|education=Hofstra University (BA)
University of Pittsburgh (MA)
New York University (MA, PhD)
University of Illinois Chicago (MA, PhD)

|occupation={{flatlist|

Philosopher
journalist
author

}}

Noël Carroll (born 1947) is an American philosopher and a leading figure in contemporary philosophy of art.{{Cite web |title=Noël Carroll |url=https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17943.No_l_Carroll |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=www.goodreads.com}} Carroll is primarily recognized for his contributions to the philosophy of film, particularly as a proponent of cognitive film theory. In addition to his work in film philosophy, he has published on topics such as journalism, philosophy of art, theory of media, and philosophy of history. {{Cite web |title=Noël Carroll - Biography |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10617606/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=IMDb |language=en-US}} Since 2012, he has held the position of distinguished professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.{{Cite web |title=Carroll, Noël |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/people/noel-carroll |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=www.gc.cuny.edu |language=en}}

Education

Carroll originally graduated from Hofstra University in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Philosophy. From this, he gained three Master of Arts in Philosophy, Cinema Studies and Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, New York University and the University of Illinois Chicago, respectively. During his tenure at New York University, he also completed his PhD of the title: "An In-Depth Analysis of Buster Keaton's The General".

He later completed another PhD from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1983.

Career

Carroll holds two PhDs, one in cinema studies and the other in philosophy. From 1972–1988, he worked as a journalist covering film, theater, performance, and fine art for publications such as the Chicago Reader, Artforum, In These Times, Dance Magazine, SoHo Weekly News, and The Village Voice. Many of these early articles have been collected in his 2011 book Living in an Artworld.{{Cite web|url=http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/film-critics/carroll/|title=The Strange Case of Noël Carroll: A Conversation with the Controversial Film Philosopher • Senses of Cinema|website=sensesofcinema.com|date=13 March 2002 |language=en-US|access-date=2018-06-17}} He has also written five documentaries.{{Cite web|url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Faculty/Core-Bios/Noel-Carroll|title=Noël Carroll|website=www.gc.cuny.edu|access-date=2018-06-17|archive-date=2018-06-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180618053921/https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Faculty/Core-Bios/Noel-Carroll|url-status=dead}}

One of Carroll's most well-known books is The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (1990). It is an examination of the aesthetics of horror fiction (in novels, stories, radio and film).{{Cite book |last=Carroll |first=Noël |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/293103.The_Philosophy_of_Horror |title=The philosophy of horror: or, Paradoxes of the heart |date=1990 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-90216-8 |location=New York}} The book's introduction notes Carroll wrote Paradoxes of the Heart in part to convince his parents that his lifelong fascination with horror fiction was not a waste of time.{{Cite book |last=Carroll |first=Noel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdwkAgAAQBAJ |title=The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart |date=2003-09-02 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-96503-7 |language=en}} Another notable book by Carroll is Mystifying Movies (1988), a critique of the ideas of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the semiotics of Roland Barthes, which has been credited with inspiring a shift away from the "psycho-semiotic Marxism" that had dominated film studies and film theory in American universities since the 1970s.Plantinga, Carl (2002). "[http://www.erudit.org/revue/cine/2002/v12/n2/024878ar.pdf Cognitive Film Theory: An Insider’s Appraisal]" Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 12, n° 2, 2002, pp. 15–37.

Carroll was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002{{Cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/noel-carroll/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation {{!}} Noël Carroll|website=www.gf.org|language=en-US|access-date=2018-06-17}} for his research in philosophy of dance.{{Cite web|url=https://news.wisc.edu/five-receive-guggenheims/|title=Five receive Guggenheims|website=news.wisc.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2018-06-17}}

He was named the sixth-most influential philosopher of art since 1945 by the Philosophical Gourmet Report.{{Cite web|url=http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2016/03/best-anglophone-philosophers-of-art-post-1945-the-results.html|title=Best Anglophone philosophers of art post-1945: the results|website=Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog|access-date=2018-06-17}}

= Positions =

Monroe C. Beardsley Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Temple University
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center
Former president of the American Society for Aesthetics

Works

Carroll is the author of more than one hundred articles and other works:

=Books=

==Monographs==

Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988.
Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory, New York, Columbia University Press, 1988.
The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart, New York, Routledge, 1990.
Theorizing the Moving Image, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
A Philosophy of Mass Art, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Interpreting the Moving Image, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction, New York, Routledge, 1999.
Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Engaging the Moving Image, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003.
Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humour and Bodily Coping, Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
On Criticism, London, Routledge, 2009.
Art in Three Dimensions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Narrative, Emotion, and Insight, with John Gibson, Penn State University Press, 2011.
Living in an Artworld: Reviews and Essays on Dance, Performance, Theater, and the Fine Arts in the 1970s and 1980s, Louisville, KY: Chicago Spectrum Press, 2012.
Humour: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature, with John Gibson, Routledge, 2016.
Arthur Danto's Philosophy of Art: Essays, Boston, Brill, 2021.
Classics in the Philosophy of Art, Oxford, Oxford University Press, in preparation.

==Edited volumes==

Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (edited with David Bordwell), Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Theories of Art Today, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (edited with Jinhee Choi), Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Philosophy in the Twilight Zone (edited with Lester Hunt), Oxford, Blackwell, 2009.
The Poetics, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Narrative (edited with an introduction by Noël Carroll), Oxford, Blackwell, 2009.

=Selected articles=

'"Hume's Standard of Taste'", The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Winter, 1984), pp.181-194

References

Sources

Mario Slugan, Noël Carroll and Film: A Philosophy of Art and Popular Culture. Bloomsbury, 2019.

External links

[http://philpapers.org/s/Noel%20Carroll Phil Papers]
[http://philosophy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/category/faculty/carroll/ Carroll's archive on the CUNY Philosophy Commons]
{{IMDb name|nm10617606}}

Category:1947 births

Category:20th-century American educators

Category:20th-century American essayists

Category:20th-century American historians

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:20th-century American philosophers

Category:20th-century American educational theorists

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Category:21st-century American journalists