James Rogers enters the Ph.D. program in the Department of Rhetoric with a B.A. in Music from the University of Virginia. With a background in musicology supplemented by training in critical theory and performance studies, Rogers intends to pursue research on American film musicals, branching out into cultural history, film studies, and queer theory. He is also working on a theory of catatonia, exploring the relationship between popular music’s perceived vapidity and the pleasure found in similitudes and affectlessness. Rogers’s mentor will be Irene Perciali, a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and a 2004–2005 Townsend Fellow.