Education: 

• PhD, University of California, Riverside, 2005
• MA, La Sierra University, Riverside, 1998
• BA, La Sierra University, Riverside, 1996

Principal Research Interests

Andrew Howe is Professor of History at La Sierra University, where he teaches courses in film history and theory, popular culture, and American history. Recent scholarship includes book chapters on post-Vietnam pessemism in Jaws, villainy in Star Trek: Voyager, and masculinity in Game of Thrones. Current research projects involve the rhetoric of fear employed during the 1980s killer bee invasions of the American Southwest, as well as the debate over the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. These two works are conceived of as chapters in a book-length project exploring the manner in which societies translate environmental events by employing the familiar rhetorical strategies and vocabularies of existing, sociological problems.

Research Areas: 

• American History
• Film Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Environmental History

Email: ahowe@lasierra.edu
Phone: 951-785-2341

AWARDS

• 2016 - University Distinguished Research Award
• 2014 - Service Learning Teacher of the Year
• 2011 - G. T. Anderson Teacher of the Year

Representative Publications

1. “‘Some birds are not meant to be caged’: Hope and Freedom in The Shawshank Redemption.” Untitled Stephen King Book. Ed. Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka (Forthcoming in 2026).
2. “Untitled Film Noir Chapter.” Cultural Representations of the Stepmother. Ed. Jo Parnell. Lanham: Lexington Books (Forthcoming in 2026).
3. “Saviors and Intruders: American Stepmothers of 1960s Hollywood.” Cultural Representations of the Stepmother. Ed. Jo Parnell. Lanham: Lexington Books (Forthcoming in 2026).
4. “Call of the Wild vs. Situational Rom-Com: Disney Live Action Films.” Disney’s Menagerie: Essays on Animals in Disney Culture. Ed. Kathy Merlock Jackson (Forthcoming in 2026).
5. “Wrestling with a Legacy: Depictions of Jacob in Visual Media.” Routledge Handbook of the Bible and Film. Ed. Jason W. Buel. New York: Routledge (Forthcoming in 2026).
6. “From Balaam to Eeyore: A Genealogy of Donkey Anthropomorphism.” Mythological Equines in Literature. Ed. Rachel L. Carazo (Forthcoming in 2026).
7. “Boldness and Innovation: Genre Conventions in Mystery, Alaska and The Nice Guys.” Russell Crowe: His Films and Pop Cultural Impact. Ed. Rachel L. Carazo (Forthcoming in 2025).
8. “Samuel Fuller’s White Dog and Race-Based Controversy.” Screening Controversy. Ed. Mark McKenna and Claire Henry. London: Routledge (Forthcoming in 2025).
9. “Blood Sport: Wolfgang Petersen and Political Violence.” Journal of American Studies (Forthcoming in 2025).
10. “With This Ring, I Thee Wed: Pugilism and Domesticity in Rocky II. Essays on ‘Rocky’ as Cultural Phenomenon. Ed. Kathy Merlock Jackson. McFarland & Co. (Forthcoming in 2025).
11. “The Robotech Phenomenon: Japanese Anime and Its Impact on American SF in the United States.” Societies in Space: Essays on the Civilized Frontier in Film and Television. Ed. Gary
    Westfahl. Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2025. 64-74
12. “The Post-9/11 Mohican: Avatar and the Transformation of the ‘Manifest Apology.’” Societies in Space: Essays on the Civilized Frontier in Film and Television. Ed. Gary Westfahl. Jefferson:
    McFarland & Co., 2025. 120-140.
13. “The Land and its Relationship to Justice in Longmire.” Return of the Western: Refracting Genre, Representing Gender in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Sue Matheson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
    University Press, 2024. 236-49.
14. “Green Warrior: Swamp Thing and the Environmentally Turbulent 1980s.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture. Ed. Leslie Kreiner Wilson. 23.1 (Spring 2024).
    <americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2024/howe.htm>
15. “Writing About Star Wars: A Historiography of the Original Trilogy.” Lucas: His Hollywood Legacy. Ed. Richard Ravalli. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2024. 75-93.