Johnson, Kenneth

Johnson, Kenneth Graduate Faculty

Positions

johnsonk@fiu.edu

My publications, relevant to my research have been related to film adaptation. I have presented papers at various conferences on both research interests, but my main interest has been to design and offer courses (online and face-to-face) in both areas of research interest for the benefit of my students, who have always come first in my 40-year career. I am most proud of my course on the nature of cinematic adaptations and my historically most popular course on representations of evil and transgression. From the first course on evil, I have polled my students on which course they would choose--a course on evil or a course on goodness. Predictably, the majority always choose evil, so the question that they have to formally answer by the end of the course is, "Why is evil more interesting than goodness?"

My research interests are in two different areas: 1. The nature of film adaptation, looking at an adaptation as a creative and critical response to a source narrative and the aesthetic and intellectual value that is achieved by one or both works. I draw on narratology (semiotic theories on the nature of narrative), theories on inter-mediality and phenomenology. 2. Narrative representations of evil and transgression. I am interested in narratives that focus on making sense of suffering as part of the human condition from the perspectives of both the agent and victim of suffering, drawing on theories of identity-subjectivity, alterity (the nature of difference and the practice of differentiating), deconstruction, phenomenology and social construction. Transgression is a related subject that focuses on the pushing of moral boundaries as a means for exploring and establishing identity-subjectivity.