About Me

My name is Julia Sirmons, and I’m a writer and critic, focusing on film and television, new media, and performance (and books). Ever since I was little, thriving off the movies my parents would rent me and sneaking the trashy TV I wasn’t allowed to watch, I’ve lived off of everything that was “excessive” and outside the bounds of “good taste.”

My goal is always to consider kinds of art and genres (both they high and low) that have been dismissed as either “self-indulgent” or “unserious.” I’ve always believed that high style, emotional effects, and intellectual engagement, are not mutually exclusive, and in always go hand-in-hand. I’ve written about everything from crime fiction and true crime, exploitation film, melodrama, Classic Hollywood, historical fiction, production design, and reality TV, for publications like Slate, The LA Review of Books, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and CrimeReads, among others.

I also have a PhD in Theatre and Performance, and an MA in Film and Media Studies, from Columbia University. In the grad school I also wrote about derided or obscure genres, like experimental film, screen opera, and theater and performance that uses video and projection. Somehow, I managed to finish a dissertation on the work of Luchino Visconti, Patrice Chéreau, Werener Schroeter, and Ivo van Hove. I’ve published some academic articles and reviews about all this, which you can learn about here. 

As part of my graduate career, I’ve taught material ranging from true crime, gender and sexuality, media in theater, theater, Shakespeare, rock and roll movies, and Chinese cinema. My primary goal as a teacher is to hone students’ media literacy. I want them to understand the relationship between style and substance, and to figure out what media is communicating and how. I want them to understand why they love whatever they love, and figure out how their “trashy” or “problematic” faves are more interesting than many critics claim they are.