Dr. John C. Tibbetts is a retired Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, where for more than twenty-five years he taught courses in film history, media studies, and theory and aesthetics. A Veteran, he served his four-year military service with the Army Security Agency, 1970-1974 as a German linguist. He is an author, educator, broadcaster, as well as an artist and pianist. He holds a PhD from the University of Kansas in Multi-Disciplinary Studies (Art History, Theater, Photography, and Film).
As a broadcaster, journalist, and scholar he has worked as a news reporter for CBS Television and Voice of America; produced classical music programming for Kansas Public Radio; and written (and illustrated) twenty-five books, more than 250 articles, and a dozen short stories (two of the latter were finalists in the prestigious annual Bram Stoker Awards). He is a Founding Member of the Kansas City Film Critics Circle (KCFCC) in 1966.
His most recent books are The Dark Side of G.K. Chesterton: Gargoyles and Grotesques, The Furies of Marjorie Bowen, The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub (McFarland, 2016), Those Who Made It: Conversations with the Legends of Hollywood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Peter Weir: Interviews (Mississippi, 2014), The Gothic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), American Classic Screen (in three volumes from Scarecrow Press, 2010), Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography (Yale University Press, 2005), Schumann: A Chorus of Voices (Amadeus Press, 2010), and Dvorak in America (Amadeus Press, 1993). Forthcoming are The Marjorie Bowen Readers, volumes one and two, from Hippocampus Press.
Most of these books contain John’s paintings and illustrations. Another hobby is performing piano accompaniment for silent films. John has researched, written, produced, and narrated two radio series: The World of Robert Schumann (currently being broadcast worldwide on the WFMT Radio Network), and Piano Portraits (broadcast on Kansas Public Radio).
He was awarded in 2008 the Kansas Governor’s Arts in Education Award, presented by Governor Kathleen Sebelius.
