Associate Professor Matthew Solomon and PhD student Vincent Longo recently contributed chapters to the book Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts (eds. Gilmore and Gottlieb, Indiana University Press, 2018). The text examines neglected areas of Welles’s work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films.

Solomon's chapter "Old-Time Movies: Welles and Silent Pictures" discusses the many references to silent movies found in the work of Orson Welles, who had watched silent films as a child, and remembered the silent era with great fondness as an adult. 

Longo's chapter "Multimedia Magic in Around the World: Orson Welles's Film-and-Theater Hybrid," provides the the first accurate description of the five missing film sequences that Welles integrated into his 1946 Broadway musical Around the World and traces their artistic influence from early twentieth-century stage illusions, slapstick comedy, and European avant-garde theater.