Steven DeRosa
- Associate Director, Writing and English, CAEI
- Senior Instructor, Film Studies
- School of Liberal Arts
- Center for Academic Excellence, Westchester
- sderosa1@mercy.edu
- (914) 674-7282
Steven DeRosa has been teaching cinema studies and screenwriting for the School of Liberal Arts at Mercy University since 2011 and has been Associate Director for Writing and English at the Center for Academic Excellence and Innovation since 2015. In addition to teaching many courses within the Media Studies program, including The Language of Film, Film and Culture, and Advanced Writing for Film and Television. Steven curates the Cinema Studies concentration website which showcases student work and directs Mercy's Annual Student Screenwriting Competition. He has also served as coordinator of the Mercy University International Film Festival since 2021.
Steven is the author of Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes and is working on an authorized biography of producer Hal Wallis. He was a contributing writer to the 56th Annual Writers Guild of America Awards which aired on Starz/Encore. Additionally, he has been a film archivist, at one time managing the MGM, Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures outtake collections, and has worked in both production and post-production in various capacities.
Steven appears on-screen in the Italian documentary Viaggio nel Cinema in 3D: Una Storia Vintage, which premiered at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. He is also featured in the documentary The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style, in addition to numerous featurettes the Blu-ray releases of Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest. In November 2020, he was featured on BBC's Talking Movies discussing the breakthrough TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Steven has lectured on screenwriting and film at NYU's Hitchcock Centennial Conference, The American Museum of the Moving Image, Film Forum and at the New World Stages in New York City. He regularly hosts film discussions at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Yonkers, where he began a partnership between the theater and Mercy University to program several films each semester to coincide with his courses. To date, students from his Hitchcock Disciples, Hollywood's Golden Age, Masters of Film, Hollywood Western and Screen Comedy & Clowns courses have attended screenings and discussions at the theater. More recently, Steven gave presentations at HitchCon '21 and HitchCon '22, both funded by Faculty Development Grants, and helped to bring HitchCon '23—the International Alfred Hitchcock Conference—to Mercy's Westchester Campus in October 2023.
Steven's dedication to his students and passion for teaching film earned him the Mercy University Teaching Excellence Award in 2018 and 2022. He has also been awarded numerous Faculty Senate Micro-Grants and Instructional Enhancement Grants. He received his BS from Pace University in Art and from The New School, he received his MA in Media Studies with a Screenwriting concentration.
- Film and Culture (Fall 2022, Fall 2020)
- Hitchcock Disciples (Spring 2022, Fall 2019, Fall 2017)
- The Hollywood Western (Spring 2024, Fall 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2017)
- Women of Film (Fall 2024)
- Fundamentals of Writing for Film and Television (Fall 2023, Spring 2021)
- Advanced Writing for Film/TV (Fall 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2019)
- The Language of Film (Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Fall 2016)
- Junior Seminar: Intellectual Property and the Movies (Summer 2016)
- Studio and Stars in Hollywood’s Golden Age – 1930-1950 (Spring 2023, Fall 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2016)
- Screen Comedy and Clowns (Fall 2022, Spring 2020)
- Media Studies Senior Seminar
- Masters of Film: Griffith, Welles, and Hitchcock (Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2018, Fall 2015)
- Understanding Movies (Summer 2024, Summer 2023, Summer 2022, Summer 2020, Fall 2019, Summer 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Summer 2018, Spring 2018, Fall 2017, Summer 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Summer 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013, Summer 2013, Spring 2013, Fall 2012, Summer 2012, Spring 2012, Fall 2011)
- AIM2Graduate English Tutorial (Winter 2015, Summer 2014, Winter 2014, Summer 2013, Winter 2013)
Books
Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes (Faber and Faber, 2001; CineScribe Media, 2011)
The Great Tomato Adventure (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2007)
Book Chapters
“Alfred Hitchcock and His Writers”, The Alfred Hitchcock Story (Titan Books, 1999)
Articles
“Needle in a Hay-Stack: How two famous murder cases crept into Hitchcock’s films—and crossed over into the director’s real life" (The Hitchcockian Quarterly, April-June 2022, Vol. 1, Iss. 1)
“John Michael Hayes and the Making of Rear Window” (Worcester Review, Fall 2017, Vol. 38)
"Defining Big World in HD" (Highdef Magazine, July 2009, Vol. 11, Iss. 4)
Awards
2022 Recipient, Mercy University Teaching Excellence Award
2021 Runner-up, Mercy University Teaching Excellence Award
2020 Runner-up, Mercy University Teaching Excellence Award
2018 Recipient, Mercy University Teaching Excellence Award
Grants
2024-2025 Mercy University Instructional Enhancement Grant, "Empowering Female Voices in Film: Guest Speaker Series", with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts (AY 2024-2025)
2023-2024 Mercy University Instructional Enhancement Grant, "Experiential Learning for Film/Culture Concentration Majors through Development of Senior Year Film Programming Course", with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts (AY 2023-2024)
2023 Faculty Development Grant, to develop research project presented at HitchCon 2023: "Hitchcockian Sleight of Hand: Unreliable Narrators, False Flashbacks and Cinematic Cheats"
2022-2023 Mercy University Instructional Enhancement Grant, Broadening the Scholarly Experience for MEDA 400 Students Through Academic Conference Participation, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts (AY 2022-2023)
2022 Faculty Development Grant, to develop research project presented at HitchCon 2022: "In Plain Sight: Individual Autonomy and the Quest for Liberty through Hitchcock's Lens"
2021-2022 Mercy University Instructional Enhancement Grant, Meta-Media Cinema: A Screening/Discussion Series Exploring Representations of Media Professions, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Marc Palmieri, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts (AY 2021-2022)
2021 Faculty Development Grant, to develop two research projects which were presented at HitchCon 2021: "Greater Love Hath No Man: Devotion and Self-Sacrifice in Hitchcock’s Unrealized No Bail for the Judge" and "Marriage of True Minds: Redemption and Romance in the Hitchcock/Hayes Films"
2019-2020 Mercy University Instructional Enhancement Grant, Bridging the Academic-Practitioner Gap in Media Studies Courses, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts and Michael Perrota, Associate Professor, School of Liberal Arts (AY 2019-2020)
2019 Mercy University Faculty Senate Micro-Grant, Hitchcock: Filming our fears, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, School of Liberal Arts (Fall 2019)
2019 Mercy University Faculty Senate Micro-Grant, American Identity and the Hollywood Western, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, School of Liberal Arts (Spring 2019)
2018 Mercy University Faculty Senate Micro-Grant, Film as a Community Experience, with Louis Grasso, Assistant Professor of Media Studies, School of Liberal Arts (Fall 2018)