Noël Carroll (born 1947) is an American philosopher considered to be one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy of art. Although Carroll is best known for his work in the philosophy of film (he is a proponent of cognitive film theory), he has also published journalism, works on philosophy of art generally, theory of media, and also philosophy of history. As of 2012, he is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Education

Career

Carroll holds PhDs in both cinema studies and 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. He has also written five documentaries. Perhaps his most popular and influential book is The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart (1990), an examination of the aesthetics of horror fiction (in novels, stories, radio and film). As noted in the book's introduction, 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. Another important 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 what Carroll describes as the "psycho-semiotic Marxism" that had dominated film studies and film theory in American universities since the 1970s. Carroll was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 for his research in philosophy of dance. He was named sixth-most influential philosopher of art since 1945 by the Philosophical Gourmet Report.

Positions

Works

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

Books

Monographs

Edited volumes

Selected articles

Sources