Film Studies

My educational and teaching background is in Film Studies and Modern European Languages, and I have previously taught at Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge. I joined Keele University as Lecturer in Film Studies in January 2013.

I specialise in film aesthetics and the history of film industries, with a particular focus on popular European cinemas and their relationship to Hollywood cinema.

I am the author of a book on the French Road Movie (Berghahn 2013) and a study guide to The Bourne Ultimatum (Auteur 2012), and have edited a collection of essays on Adaptation in French film, theatre and literature (Peter Lang 2011). My forthcoming published work looks at the two adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, representations of Paris in recent French action cinema, and the recent European films of Woody Allen.

I am currently commencing a long-term project on parody in recent British film and television.

Books

 The French Road Movie: Space, Mobility, Identity (Berghahn, 2013).

 Studying The Bourne Ultimatum (Auteur, 2012).

Adaptation: Studies in French and Francophone Culture, co-edited with Andreea Weisl-Shaw (Peter Lang, 2011).

Journal Articles

 ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and the New “European Cinema”’, Film Criticism (forthcoming 2013).

 ‘The City Presented to Itself: Perspective, Performance and the Anxiety of Authenticity in Recent Parisian Films’, Studies in European Cinema 8.1 (2011), 31-42.

‘The Rhetoric of the Transnational: Interpretation and Identity in Géla and Temur Babluani's L'Héritage/Legacy (2006)’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 8.1 (2010), 3-14.

‘Virtual Poaching and Altered Space: Reading Parkour in French Visual Culture’, Modern and Contemporary France 18.1 (2010), 93-107.

‘Baise-moi: The Art of Going Too Far’, E-pisteme 2.1 (2009)

‘Sex, the City and the Cinematic: The Possibility of Female Spectatorship in Claire Denis's Vendredi Soir’, French Forum, 33.1-2 (2008), 245-260.

Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, 286 (Gale, 2010).

‘The Road as the (Non-)Place of Masculinity: L'Emploi du temps’, Studies in French Cinema, 8.2 (2008), 137-148.

Chapters in Scholarly Editions

 ‘Jamón, Jamón’, ‘10’, ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’, in The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Films, ed. Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2014).

 ‘Paris je t’aime (plus): Europhobia as European-ness in Pierre Morel and Luc Besson’s “Dystopia Trilogy”’, in The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning and Globalisation, ed. Mary Harrod, Mariana Liz and Alissa Timoshkina (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming 2013).

 ‘Beyond Anti-Americanism, Beyond Eurocentrism: Locating Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms in the Context of European Extremism’, in The New Extremism in Cinema: from France to Europe, ed. Tina Kendall and Tanya   Horeck (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 55-65.

 ‘Attack of the Clones: Watching Stars Playing Stars in French Biopics’, in Adaptation: Studies in French and Francophone Culture, ed. Neil Archer and Andreea Weisl-Shaw (Peter Lang, 2011), 163-175.

Book Reviews

 ‘Peter Brunette, Michael Haneke’, in Studies in European Cinema (forthcoming 2013).

Conference/seminar papers (recent)

 ‘Who owns Stieg Larsson? The Curious Case of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) versus The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)’, paper to be given at Adaptation, Authorship and Ownership, European Cinema Research Forum conference, Edge Hill University, 16 -18 July 2012.

‘Little Big Screens: Poetics of Scale in the Film and Television work of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’, paper given at The Big Screen vs. The Small Screen, conference held at Canterbury Christ Church University, 16 February 2011.

‘Paris je t'aime... plus: Europhobia as European-ness in Pierre Morel's Taken and Julie Delpy's Two Days in Paris’, paper given at The European-ness of European Cinema conference held at King's College London, 4 June 2010.

‘Between transnational cinema and tourist cinema: the question of interpretation in Gela and Temur Babluani's Legacy’, invitational paper given at CRASSH Screen Media Seminar, Cambridge, February 1 2010.

‘Locating Dumont's Twentynine Palms: is this the State we're in?’, paper given at New Extremism: Contemporary European Cinema, conference held at Anglia Ruskin University, 24-25 April 2009.

‘Heart is where the home is: transnational soundtracks to narratives of itinerancy and loss’, paper given at the Screen conference, University of Glasgow, 4-6 July 2008.

‘Star as fan, fan as star: Simon Pegg and participatory culture’, paper given at New Developments in Stardom, conference held at King’s College London, 22 March 2008.

Approaches to Film

Film Genre, Narrative and the Star

Twentieth-Century Novels into Film

Supervisory Expertise:

Hollywood cinema

French and Spanish cinema post-1960

The Road Movie

Adaptation theory