Gangster Movies and Their Muses, with Frankie Bailey

11/08/19 • 19 min

Frankie Bailey is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice and a crime novelist. Her research focuses on crime history, mass media and pop culture. She is the author of the Lizzie Stuart and Hannah McCabe mystery series.

Bailey is working on a reference book that maps the cultural and historical significance of nine of the most renown gangster movies (including The Grandfather (1998), White Heat (1949), Scarface (1990), American Gangster (2007) and Good Fellas (1990), among others) as well as the television series The Sopranos.

The book explores the impact of the Motion Picture Production Code or the "Hays Code" of the 1930s, the emergence of the "G-Man" as a protagonist, and the role of fashion in the genre.

Her other current writing projects include a non-fiction book about four hundred years of dress and appearance in American crime and justice and a historical thriller set in 1939.

Article mentioned: Inside the Debate Between Netflix and Big Theater Chains Over ‘The Irishman’ (The New York Times).

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

The book explores the impact of the Motion Picture Production Code or the "Hays Code" of the 1930s, the emergence of the "G-Man" as a protagonist, and the role of fashion in the genre.

Her other current writing projects include a non-fiction book about four hundred years of dress and appearance in American crime and justice and a historical thriller set in 1939.

Article mentioned: Inside the Debate Between Netflix and Big Theater Chains Over ‘The Irishman’ (The New York Times).

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Previous Episode

The Connections Between Eating Disorders and Mental Health, with Tomoko Udo

Tomoko Udo of the School of Public Health has examined the connections between eating disorders and mental health.

Fewer than 30 percent of people with eating disorders (i.e. anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating) seek help from a counselor or psychologist. As a result, researchers have found that those suffering from eating disorders are often at higher risk of suicide attempts.

According to Udo, health-care providers should carry out routine screenings for eating disorders along with suicide attempt history in order to inform a more comprehensive treatment plan.

Udo is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Behavior. She conducted the study with Sarah Bitley of UAlbany's School of Public Health and Carlos Grilo of the Yale University School of Medicine.

Next Episode

The Search for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Off the West Coast, with Kevin Knuth

Kevin Knuth is an associate professor of physics whose research focuses on exoplanets, and quantum mechanics and relativity.

He is a former computer scientist in the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA’s Ames Research Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he designed algorithms to analyze astrophysical data as well as earth science data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Knuth is preparing to lead a team of scientists to track unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) off the coast of California.

He is pairing up with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists including Deep Prasad, CEO of the quantum computing company ReactiveQ, and Rizwan Virk, executive director of the startup accelerator PlayLabs@MIT, for the project.

Read more on Knuth’s work.

Knuth is also a member of the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Studies (SCU), a research organization comprising scientists, former military officers and law enforcement personnel. The group issued a letter to several members of Congress this week containing a series of recommendations for the advancement of UAP research and the public dissemination of the data.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Sejong Univ./Hur et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

Full transcript of the SCU's letter to Congress:

Scientific Exploration of Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena

Subject: Non-profit research organization calls for widespread scientific studies of unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP).

From: Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Studies (SCU)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Studies (SCU) is committed to the rigorous scientific study of the UAP phenomenon. SCU believes that all data regarding unidentified aerospace objects should be made available in the public domain so that it can be properly investigated by the established scientific community. This is currently not the case with military and other government agency sightings and encounters.

The SCU conducts and publishes peer-reviewed research into UAPs, and encourages the open publication of other agencies’ and institutions’ scientific research into these phenomena. In two recent cases investigated by SCU, from 2004 and 2015 involving the interaction of UAPs with F/A-18 Super Hornets and Navy Carrier Strike Groups, SCU discovered that radar, radio, and other EM data collected by the US Navy had not been released to the public. Based on SCU’s preliminary investigations of these events, it believes that a full scientific investigation of the existing data would be able to uncover valuable information relating to both national security and advancement of our understanding of physics, aerospace engineering, and our world. The SCU recommends the following:

- that Congress should allocate public research funding through the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Defense (DOD), and/or NASA to study these phenomena, whose results would then be published in the public-domain;

- that Congress should require all government branches (e.g. Armed Services, NASA, NORAD, etc.) to disseminate all data (electronic and observational), and consequent research on these phenomena, which does not compromise our national security interests, to the open scientific community;

Scientific Exploration of Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena

The SCU is a research organization composed largely of scientists, former military officers, and law enforcement personnel with technical experience and backgrounds in investigation and who have studied UAP phenomena extensively.

The following SCU affiliates and supporters have endorsed the above statements:

SCU Affiliates

Timothy D. Brigham, Ph.D. Psychology, University of Georgia, GA
Silvano Colombano, Ph.D. Biophysics, University at Buffalo (SUNY), Computer Scientist, NASA-Ames, CA
Joseph S. DiNoto, Ph.D. Strategic Security Studies (ABD), Huntsville, AL
Mitchell Max Dullnig, M.D. Internal and Emergency Medicine, U.T. Houston Medical School, Houston TX Erol A. Faruk, Ph.D. Chemistry, Queen Mary College, London University
Paul Kingsbury, Ph.D. Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Kevin Knuth, Ph.D. Physics, University at Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY
Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D. Sociology, CUFOS, Univ Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL
Michael D. Swords, PhD. Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies and Natural Sciences, Western Michigan University, MI
Gregory B. Vásqu...