Leo E. Zonn
Retirees — Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Professor

Contact
- E-mail: zonn@austin.utexas.edu
- Campus Mail Code: A3100
Interests
Representation and Media, Especially Cinema, Geographies of Popular Culture
Biography
Leo Zonn received a B.A. in History from California State University, Northridge in 1969, an M.A. in Geography from the same university in 1972, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1975 (Harold Rose, adviser). He has been on the faculty of Arizona State University (1975-1986), East Carolina University (1986-1997), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997-2004) and the University of Texas at Austin (2004-present). He served 19 years as a department chair, with eleven years at ECU, five at UNC, and three at UT.
Zonn regularly teaches courses in social-cultural geography. His primary courses at UT are Frontiers in Geography (the senior capstone course), Cinematic Geographies, Contemporary Cultural Geography, and a first year seminar, “Re-presenting Los Angeles in the Media".
Zonn is interested in issues of geographic representation as they occur within a variety of sites, from landscapes to popular media, but his special interest is in terms of cinema. This curiosity has usually been within some of the more classic frames of textual analysis, although more recently he has also become especially interested in cinematic exhibition. As such he is concerned with the complex network that frames the integration of technology, production, audience, text, and the site of exposition into a place-based filmic experience. This means that the drive-in, home screening room, traveling film theater, portable DVD player, and the many standard forms of the movie theater, as examples, provide geographic experiences worthy of consideration. His overall research agenda is not informed by any one conceptual structure, but instead draws from a rich and varied set of mostly social-theoretical views, while even humanist influences can be found blended into the mix.
Selected Publications
Dick Winchell and L. Zonn. 2012. “Urban Spaces of American Indians in The Exiles”. Geographical Review, 102, 2, pp. 149-165.
Dixon, D., L. Zonn, and J. Bascom. 2008. “Post-ing the Cinema: Reassessing Analytical Stances Toward a Geography of Film”, in The Geography of Cinema: A Cinematic World, edited by C. Lukinbeal and S. Zimmermann. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 25-47.
Zonn, L. 2007. “Going to the Movies: The Filmic Site as Geographic Endeavor”, Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, Vol. 1, pp. 63-67.
Dixon, D., and L. Zonn. 2005. Confronting the Geopolitical Aesthetic: Frederic Jameson, The Perfumed Nightmare and the Perilous Place of Third Cinema, Geopolitics, Vol. 10, pp. 290-315. Reprinted 2007, in Cinema and Popular Geo-Politics , Edited by M. Power and A. Crampton, London and New York: Routledge, 95-120
Lukinbeal, C., and L. Zonn, Guest Editors. 2004. Cinematic Geographies, GeoJournal , Vol. 59. Holmes, G., Zonn, L., and A. Cravey. 2004. Placing Man in the West: Masculinities of The Last Picture Show, GeoJournal, Vol. 59, pp. 277- 288.
Dixon, D., and L. Zonn. 2004. Film Networks and the Place(s) of Technology, in Geography and Technology, edited by S. Brunn, S. Cutter, and J.W. Harrington. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 243-266.
Zonn, L. and D. Winchell. 2002. Smoke Signals: Locating Sherman Alexie's Narratives of American Indian Identity, in Engaging Film: Geographies of Mobility and Identity , edited by T. Cresswell and D. Dixon. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 140-158.
Aitken, S., and L. Zonn. Editors. 1994. Place, Power, Situation and Spectacle: A Geography of Film . Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers.
Zonn, L ., and S. Aitken. 1994. Of Pelicans and Men: Symbolic Landscapes, Gender, and Australia's Storm Boy, in Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film (see edited volume above), pp. 137-159.
Aitken, S., and L. Zonn. 1994. Re-Presenting the Place Pastiche, in Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle (see edited volume above), pp. 3-25. Aitken, S., and L. Zonn. 1993. Weir(d) Sex: Representation of Gender- Environment Relations in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli , Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 11, pp. 191-212.
Zonn, L . Editor. 1990. Place Images in Media: Portrayal, Meaning, and Experience (ed.). Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers.