Monday, Jun 20, 2011
Rider’s Jack Sullivan and his family were featured in a Father’s Day feature report on CNN.
by Sean Ramsden
Dr. Jack Sullivan, a professor of English and the director of the American Studies program at Rider, was featured in a CNN Father’s Day segment that aired multiple times on Sunday, June 19. Sullivan was featured along with his two teenage sons, Geoffrey and David, and his wife, Robin Bromley, as well as the small fathers’ group of which he’s been a part for the past decade and a half.
“We’re a group of friends – all fathers – who have gotten together to meet once a week since the kids were infants,” explained Sullivan of the New York City-based group, which began convening informally in 1998. “We’ve gone from talking about diapers to talking about college. It’s been a long, very exciting journey.”
The segment, which appeared as a feature during CNN’s Sunday news programming, focuses on the relationship between the fathers and their children over the years, as well as the bond that exists among the group. Sullivan’s family welcomed CNN cameras into their home throughout the shooting process to record vignettes from their life.
“It's all about the joys and challenges of being a father,” he said.
The segment can be viewed on CNN.com by clicking here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2011/06/19/natpkg.fathers.group.cnn.
Considered the preeminent United States scholar on the subject, Sullivan is the author of Hitchcock’s Music, which analyzes the way the master of suspense complemented his filmed images with equally gripping musical scores. The book, published in December 2006 by Yale University Press, earned him an award at the 40th ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards Ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York in 2008.
Hitchcock’s Music, which was also cited by the London Observer as the best film book of the year and merited an admiring, full-page review in The New York Times, hardly represents the sum of Sullivan’s academic interests, however. A scholar of 19th- and 20th-century literature as well as music, film and American culture, he has written for Opera, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday, USA Today and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Sullivan has also authored program notes for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., Carnegie Hall and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.