Failed Cover Letter - University of York, Jan 2022

Application for Lecturer in Film and Television

Dear Prof. ___ and Selection Panel,

I felt tremendously enthused when learning of this post as it is exactly what I am looking for to re-enter academia after a period away due to illness. As my CV indicates, my postgraduate studies involved a blend of film and visual culture and my subsequent research has been underpinned by concerns with convergences between different modes and practices in contemporary moving image production. Informed by these research specialisms, my teaching will be a great asset to the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media.

Knowledge of television has figured significantly in my research on contemporary film, visual culture and moving image production, largely in the ways artists and film-makers engage with television archives. This is the focus of my article currently under review at Screen which compares the ways historical narratives of real events in 1980s Chile and Northern Ireland are reconstructed from television archives in the 2012 films Good Vibrations and No to expose the effects on memory that take place in post-conflict and post-dictatorship societies undergoing transformational justice and social change.

As well as the extensive experience of teaching in film outlined in my CV, I taught examples of television at University of Salford in workshops with final-year students on the television and radio programme, and at Newcastle University in my specialist third-year option on adaptation. At Salford, I worked closely with and learned a great deal from television theory colleagues such as Dr ___, now at University of the Arts London. Additionally, in making Audiovisual Cultures Podcast for the past four years and interviewing people working in different film and television industries as cast and crew, I have gained increasing knowledge of industrial processes and a desire to apply that learning to a transregional study of screen production across Britain and Ireland.

In a similar way to my Old Borders, New Technologies study, published in 2014, the Belfast Onscreen project I plan to develop would centre on post-2000 screen production made in and about Belfast and Northern Ireland and document the various ways this dovetails with tourism as part of the place’s peacetime re-industrialisation. This re-industrialisation is driven by the service of national and international film and television production with ramifications for the city’s psychogeography in its continual re-mapping, firstly by sectarian conflict, then by its use for location shooting, and again by the tourism activities arising from both circumstances. The project would also intersect with studies of small-nation production and perhaps pose challenges to such bordering in how we frame research. If appointed, I will make this research and related funding bids a priority as it offers an ideal opportunity for research-led teaching as well as teaching-led research with York’s production students.

My potential to attract research funding is shown in the relationships I built at Newcastle during my teaching fellowship there in 2014–15, where, under the mentorship of Prof. ___, I applied for a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Appropriating Conflict: Re-Archivizing Mediated Memories of Violence’. My study aimed to compare film-makers’ and artists’ engagements with violent pasts through the archive and to stress a societal need for inclusive approaches to history- and memory-telling. Although unsuccessful, my application inspired Prof. ___ to lead an investigative team – of which I was an original co-investigator – that was successfully awarded a substantial AHRC grant for the 4-year ‘Screening Violence’ project currently underway. I was involved in preparing the application, including organising and facilitating engagement events that served as scoping exercises and data collection. Unfortunately in 2017 I became too ill to work and had to withdraw before the bid was submitted. With the appropriate support and resources, I am confident in my ability to write a winning bid in the near future.

Other areas of interest to me include the extension of film culture into the visual arts, which I examine in my studies of Damien Hirst’s 2017 exhibition Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. For me, responses to this show demonstrate the necessity for the broader media literacy and critical thinking skills which film and media education provide. As well as adaptation, modernism and documentary, further teaching interests I have and would like to explore include heritage and post-heritage British cinema, the distinctions in television shows between series, arcs, episodes and anthologies as different structures for narrative storytelling, and how story arcs in seasonal series have become increasingly serialised in the twenty-first century. There is also increasing scope to investigate the rise of podcasting in fandom and as ‘behind the scenes’ accompaniments to programmes and films, especially as streaming services make re-watching more accessible.

Given my experience with audio and video production, virtual classrooms, and more traditional in-person teaching methods, I am fully prepared to take a flexible and blended approach to best serve the needs of York’s students. In these pursuits I am mindful of accessibility needs and I am adept at working with AI software to generate transcriptions and captioning, and in providing clear text and images in the visual aspects of my materials. I also feel strongly that representation matters and I am actively inclusive in who I speak to for the podcast, and in my teaching have been increasingly reflecting the diversity of who makes, stars in and consumes audiovisual media.

Finally, I left my last academic position in 2017 due to ill-health and I have worked hard under challenging circumstances throughout my recovery to get well and be able to re-enter the structured workforce. I have continued to produce academic publications and have taught myself to use digital audio workstations and have developed skills in social media marketing and website design. I am also highly competent in a wide range of administrative tasks and am quick to learn new systems and always eager to take updated training. If offered the post, I will be happy to validate my teaching experience by undertaking an accredited course. As my publication and dissemination record shows, my determination to excel in research and contribute new knowledge to the study of cultural phenomena has never wavered. It will be my great pleasure to demonstrate my skills, knowledge and experience further at interview, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Paula Blair

Yorkshire Dales, April 2016