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Submission deadline:  October 15, 2016 ReFocus : The Films of Mary Harron Edited by Kyle Barrett and Paula Blair Edinburgh University Press Series Editors: Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer ALTHOUGH WE HAD A GREAT RESPONSE TO OUR ORIGINAL POST, THERE ARE STILL WORKS AND TOPICS WHICH ARE UNDER-REPRESENTED IN THE VOLUME. WE ARE PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN RECEIVING ABSTRACTS AND EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST FOR THE FOLLOWING: Exclusive interviews/discussions with Harron or regular collaborators (e.g. Guinevere Turner, Lili Taylor) Forthcoming projects such as Alias Grace , The Family ,  XX , etc. Commercials/advertising, e.g. Armani's 2012 campaign Short projects and documentaries such as Sonnet for a Towncar ,  Holding Fast , We the Economy,  Winds of Change Harron as director for hire and/or analysis of her work on television shows such as Fear Itself , Graceland , Constantine , The Following ,  Homicide: Life o n the Streets , The Nine ,...

Yesterday and today see a strike action calling for fair pay in Higher Education, initiated by the University and College Union . As well as the dispute over the substantial decline in pay in real terms for staff while vice-chancellors' pay packets are soaring, this action challenges persisting gender inequality in earnings and the casualization of teaching labour. I happen to be one of the 75,000 or so individuals working on fixed-term contracts with limited prospects of more secure employment and little stability in any area of my life, who is expected to produce work of the highest REF-able/TEF-able quality. Something has to give, and increasingly that something is my physical and mental health. However, I am continuing to mark exams, read PhD work, do peer reviews, check emails, and think about how I can improve my job applications and interview skills instead of taking part in the action. My reason is that faced with at least three months without wages in just over a month I...

ReFocus : The Films of Mary Harron Edited by Kyle Barrett and Paula Blair Edinburgh University Press Series Editors: Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer Canadian-born filmmaker and screenwriter Mary Harron has created a distinctive body of work over the past twenty years, largely working in the United States, examining feminism in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), consumerist hyper-masculinity in American Psycho (2000) and teenage coming-of-age in The Moth Diaries (2011).   Harron has also directed episodes of network, cable and streaming television series, including Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999), Six Feet Under (2000-2005) and Constantine (2014-2015) as well as the television film Anna Nicole (2013).   This ReFocus volume seeks chapters that focus on Harron’s diverse career as an independent filmmaker and director-for-hire within television. Harron emerged during the “Indiewood” boom in the 1990s and has often...

List of events I plan to attend at the 2016 Belfast Film Festival. Join me if you can! Thu 14 April District Zero 7pm MAC Remake Remix Rip-Off 9pm Beanbag Cinema  Fri 15 April Parisienne 6.30pm QFT  When Marnie Was There 9pm QFT Sat 16 April Only A Free Individual Can Create A Free Society 12noon QFT Mairead McClean 2.30pm QFT House of Mirth 3.30pm QFT Virgin Mountain 6.30pm QFT Land of Mine 8.30pm QFT Sun 17 April Belfast Nativity 12noon Movie House Dublin Rd Swansong 1.15pm QFT Elephant 4pm QFT Fractured City 6pm Movie House Dublin Rd 3 1/2 Minutes 8pm Pavillion Bar Mon 18 April Almost Holy 6.30pm QFT Notfilm 20.45pm QFT Tue 19 April  Contact 7pm Beanbag Cinema Psychomania 9pm Beanbag Cinema Wed 20 April Psy-Warriors 6.30pm Beanbag Cinema No Home Movie 9pm Movie House Dublin Rd Thu 21 April Vessel 4pm MAC Traders 6.40pm QFT Son of Saul 9.15pm QFT Fri 22 April ...

The following is a brief and neat version of the paper I gave at BAFTSS 2015 and was privileged to test-run with the general public at Newcastle City Library, both in April 2015.

A recording of my paper at The Real and the Intermedial conference held at Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca in October 2015.

What has happened all over the world in the past week (my allusion is deliberately vague and the time-frame arbitrary; how/where ought we to prescribe limitations on something as ubiquitous as violence?) serves as a new caution to be wary of using terms which include the 'post' prefix. 'Post-conflict' and 'post-colonialism', for example, are not always helpful or accurate. They imply that the problems are over and dealt with. They are not. Post-dictatorship countries like Chile still suffer the effects of the Pinochet years. Northern Ireland is only post-conflict in that the years of intense sustained violence have ceased. The issues from the Northern Ireland conflict are very much present, it's just that the fighting now takes place largely - though not exclusively - through words and political actions rather than with weapons. On a more global scale, the oxymoronic war on terror has created a perpetuation of terror. It has continued the globalization of ...

In trying to tackle the issue with having more research ideas than time or opportunities to publish them all, I figured I'd fire up the old blog to post up almost verbatim versions of papers and embryonic ideas to build an archive and show that I'm still active even though I'm still in that lovely early-career-and-may-not-have-a-job-in-a-few-months stage. This is one I gave in the Literature seminar series in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics , Newcastle University, on 25 February 2015, and again at a workshop at University of Aberdeen. This paper builds on a case study from my monograph , looking at it alone instead of in comparison to another film by the same artist.

It is a year and a day since I last posted. I had just begun working as a Teaching Fellow in the University of Aberdeen. What a year 2013 turned out to be. I designed and coordinated an Honours course on Cinema and the American Avant-garde, and taught on the Introduction to Visual Culture and Cinema and Revolution courses. There were personal and professional difficulties, but I made the most incredible friends anyone could hope for, and learned so much about teaching, learning, and life. The six months flew in all too quickly, and I moved back to Belfast at the end of June (just in time for marching season, of course). I'd have liked to have travelled a bit, but Aberdeen is an expensive city to live in and I knew I wouldn't have income again until November as I had been offered a similar full-time fixed term position at Queen's, so back to my ma's it was. What a summer. I had decided to save my earnings and eke them out until I was working again rather than sign on. ...

I’m settling well in my fixed-term post of Teaching Fellow in Film and Visual Culture. The teaching load is heavy, the days will be manic, and I’m raring to get cracking. We’re covering some great material with which I am very comfortable, and am becoming happily reacquainted with Deleuze’s Cinema texts. The PhD has done something to my brain, reading Deleuze gives me such joy now – what a difference from the frustrated grappling during the MA. Hopefully I can help my second year undergraduates get a decent grasp of him. With only four full-time staff (including brand new short-term me), teaching for the department this semester, we are stretched, but shaping up to be a crack team. There will be little time for our own research endeavours. The commissioning editor for my monograph is happy for me to push my deadline back and make producing the manuscript my summer project. I have major revisions to do on an article that came back from peer review due in March. Considering I threw...