Sarah Atkinson is Principal Lecturer in Media and Film at the University of Brighton. Her research in the field of Digital Film Studies and audio-visual storytelling has involved extensive practice-based explorations into new forms of fictional and dramatic storytelling in visual and sonic media. Her own multi-screen interactive cinema installation Crossed Lines has been exhibited internationally. Her first monograph Beyond the Screen: Future Fictions and Audiences will be published by Continuum in December 2013. Sarah has been an Open University SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education) Fellow since 2011, working with SP-ARK, the Sally Potter online archive to explore its pedagogic potential within film and media curriculum and to inform its future development. Sarah has spent the last eight months documenting the entire production process of Ginger & Rosa as part of a wider investigation into the impact of the digital revolution upon feature filmmaking.
Feona Attwood is a Professor in the Media Department at Middlesex University, UK. Her research is in the area of sex in contemporary culture; and in particular, in onscenity; sexualization; sexual cultures; new technologies, identity and the body; and controversial media. She is the editor of Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (2009), porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography (2010) and (with Vincent Campbell, I.Q. Hunter and Sharon Lockyer) Controversial Images (in press) and the co-editor of journal special issues on Controversial Images (with Sharon Lockyer, Popular Communication, 2009), Researching and Teaching Sexually Explicit Media (with I.Q. Hunter, Sexualities, 2009), and Investigating Young People’s Sexual Cultures (with Clarissa Smith, Sex Education, 2011). Her recent publications have focussed on online culture, aesthetics, sex and the media, and public engagement. She is leading an international research network on onscenity, funded by the AHRC and is at the start of an AHRC Fellowship project. Her current book project is Media, Sex and Technology.
Harry M. Benshoff is a Professor of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of North Texas. His research interests include topics in film genres, film history, film theory, and multiculturalism. He has published essays on blaxploitation horror films, Hollywood LSD films, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Twilight (2008). He is the author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997) and Dark Shadows (Wayne State University Press, 2011). With Sean Griffin he co-authored America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Blackwell, 2004) and Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
Mikita Brottman is a psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic known for her psychological readings of the dark and pathological elements of contemporary culture. Brottman's articles and case studies have appeared in Film Quarterly, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, New Literary History, and American Imago. She has written influentially on horror films, critical theory, reading, psychoanalysis, and the work of the American folklorist, Gershon Legman. She currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Costas Constandinides is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Communications at The University of Nicosia. He is the author of From Film Adaptation to Post-celluloid Adaptation: Rethinking the Transition of Popular Narratives and Characters across Old and New Media (New York/London: Continuum, 2010) and he is a contributor to the forthcoming volume Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television (I.B. Tauris). He is currently co-editing a volume on Cypriot Cinema with Yiannis Papadakis for publication by Bloomsbury. He is also a member of the artistic committee of Cyprus Film Days IFF, which is co-organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus and Rialto theatre.
K.J.Donnelly is reader in film at the University of Southampton. He is author of Occult Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2013), British Film Music and Film Musicals (Palgrave, 2008), The Spectre of Sound (BFI, 2006) and Pop Music in British Cinema (BFI, 2001). He is editor of Film Music: Critical Approaches (Edinburgh University Press, 2001) and (with Philip Hayward) Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future (Routledge, 2012).
Thomas H. Green is a writer and journalist for the Daily Telegraph, where he also created and devised the annual Telegraph Festival Guide. Beyond roles at this publication, he also writes for Mixmag, Q Magazine and the artdesk.com (the latter of which he also founded). Thomas H. Green is also the author of the successful book Rock Shrines (Harper & Collins, 2010), as well as being the founder and editor-in-chief for www.beatmag.net between 2005 and 2008.
Ken Gelder is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His books include Reading the Vampire (1994), Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M. Jacobs), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004) and Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007). His book New Vampire Cinema will be published by the British Film Institute in December 2012. He teaches popular genres of fiction, Australian literature, and subcultural studies.
Benjamin Halligan is the Director of Postgraduate Research Studies for the College of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Salford. His publications include Michael Reeves (Manchester University Press, 2003), Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics (Ashgate, 2010; co-edited with Michael Goddard), Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise (Continuum, 2012; co-edited with Michael Goddard and Paul Hegarty), Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music (Continuum, 2013, co-edited with Michael Goddard and Nicola Spelman) and The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Routledge, 2013; co-edited with Robert Edgar and Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs).
Joan Hawkins is Associate Professor in Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. She has research and publication interests in film, theory, experimental prose and performance and taste cultures. Joan Hawkins’ books include Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and she is currently completing the volume Burning Down the House: Downtown Film, Video and TV Culture 1975-2001.
Steffen Hantke has written on contemporary literature, film, and culture. He is author of Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary Literature (1994), as well as editor of Horror, a special topics issue of Paradoxa (2002), Horror: Creating and Marketing Fear (2004), Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010), and, with Rudolphus Teeuwen, of Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers, and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labor in Higher Education (2007). His essays and reviews have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Critique, StoryTelling, Literature/Film Quarterly, and other journals. He teaches in the American Culture Program at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea.
Leon Hunt is Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Studies. He is the author of British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (1998), Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger (2003), the BFI TV Classics volume The League of Gentlemen (2008) and Cult British TV Comedy: From Reeves and Mortimer to Psychoville (forthcoming 2013), and co-editor of East Asian Cinemas: Transnational Connections on Film (2008) and Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies on Film (forthcoming 2013). He is the current editor of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.
Mark Jancovich is professor of Film and Television Studies at University of East Anglia. His interests include film, media and cultural theory; genre (particularly horror, pornography and the historical epic); audience and reception studies; and contemporary popular television. He is currently working on a history of American horror in the 1940s. Publications include: The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (with Lucy Faire and Sarah Stubbings) (BFI, 2003); edited with Antonio Lazaro, Julian Stringer, and Andrew Willis, Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste (MUP, 2003); edited with James Lyons, Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, the Industry and Fans (BFI, 2003); edited, Horror: The Film Reader, (Routledge, 2001); edited with Joanne Hollows and Peter Hutchings, The Film Studies Reader (Arnold, 2000); Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s (Manchester University Press, 1996); edited with Joanne Hollows, Approaches to Popular Film (Manchester University Press, 1995); The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Horror (Batsford, 1992).
Jason Lee is Professor and Head of Film and Media with Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Derby, where he runs the MA pathway in Horror and Transgression. He is the author and editor of fifteen books and editor of the journal and book series Transgressive Culture, with work translated into nine languages. Jason Lee’s books include Pervasive Perversions – paedophilia and child sexual abuse in media culture (London: Free Association Books, 2005), and Cultures of Addiction, ed. (New York: Cambria, 2011). His main areas concern key taboo topics, including addiction, madness and abuse in popular culture. His next book is The Psychology of Screenwriting (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
Ernest Mathijs is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is the co-author of 100 Cult Films (2011) and Cult Cinema (2011), and the author of The Cinema of David Cronenberg (2008) and John Fawcett's Ginger Snaps (2013). He is directing research projects on contemporary cult cinema and on digital cinema at the Centre for Cinema Studies at UBC (www.centreforcinemastudies.com)
Alex Marlow-Mann holds a PhD from the University of Reading and is currently Lecturer in European Film at the University of Birmingham. A specialist on Italian cinema, he is the author of The New Neapolitan Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and numerous articles on Italian film genres (musicals, cop thrillers, gothic horror) as well as on contemporary Italian cinema and British and Italian silent cinema.
Patricia MacCormack is Reader in Film Studies at Anglia Ruskin University and has written on a diverse range of issues such as continental philosophy, body modification, performance art, monster theory and European horror film. Patricia MacCormack is the author of Cinesexuality. (Ashgate, 2008) and the co-editor of The Schizoanalysis of Cinema (Continuum. 2008). Her articles have also appeared in journals such as Women: A Cultural Review, Theory, Culture and Society, New Formations and Body and Society. She has published chapters in anthologies such as Queering the Non-Human, Deleuze and Queer Theory, Caligari's Heirs and Zombie Culture which include work on masochism, cinesexuality, horror film and continental theory.
John Mercer is Senior Lecturer in Screen Cultures at The Birmingham School of Media and is a member of The Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. His research interests concern issues of gender and sexuality in popular culture. His primary research interest is in the impact and influence of pornography on gay culture. He is also interested in the relationships between aesthetic and stylistic tropes and emotional affects across media texts but especially in the form often described as melodrama. He has previously published work on gay pornography that has appeared in Paragraph (J. Still, ed), The Journal of Homosexuality, Pornocopia: Eclectic Views on Gay Pornography (T. Morrison, ed) and Framing Celebrity ( S. Redmond and S. Holmes, eds) and Hard to Swallow: Reading Pornography On-Screen (D. Kerr and C. Hines, eds). He is editor of The Journal of Gender Studies, and is the author (with Martin Shingler) of Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility.
Ieuan Morris was born in North Wales, and studied at Central St Martin’s, London and at the School of Film and TV, Royal College of Art. His first films were shown in art galleries in New York, Montreal and the ICA, London. At the London-based Oedipus Productions in the mid-1980s, he produced and directed a number of drama-documentaries for Channel 4 TV and produced music videos for London Records. During this period, he was a visiting lecturer at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. In 1987, he became Training Director at the North East Media Training Centre, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which was awarded the British Film Institute Education Award in 1990. He joined the teaching staff of the University of Glamorgan in 1994. He was awarded a Readership in 2004 and specialises in screenwriting and directing as well as in the study of European and Avant-garde cinema. Concurrently with his academic career, he has further developed his craft as a filmmaker completing numerous award-winning short films and documentaries. He is presently developing a feature-length film with Fragrant Films.
Julian Petley is Professor of Screen Media and Journalism in the School of Arts, Brunel University, Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the board of Index on Censorship. Julian Petley’s recent books include Censorship: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld 2009), Film and Video Censorship in Contemporary Britain (Edinburgh University Press 2011).
Jason S Polley is assistant professor of American literature and culture at Hong Kong Baptist University. While completing his PhD at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, he was an instructor at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia; Universidad Espiritu Santo, Guayaquil, Ecuador; and the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. His publications include a chapter on John Banville and maternal property in Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance (2007); a review of District 9 (Jure Gentium 2008); an essay on the Jonathan Franzen-Oprah Winfrey scandal (Magazine Americana 2008); two book-length creative nonfictions--Refrain (2010) and Cemetery Miss You (2011); the book Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo: Narratives of Everyday Justice (2011); and two forthcoming journal articles, one on race theory and justice in Smiley’s The Greenlanders, the other on media studies and Cold War conspiracy theory in Allan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen.
Steven Rybin is an Assistant Professor of Film at Georgia Gwinnett College, near Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is the co-editor, with Will Scheibel, of Going Home: New Essays on Nicholas Ray in Cinema Culture. He is author of Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film and The Cinema of Michael Mann, as well as other articles and book chapters. He blogs at cinephilepapers.blogspot.com.
Jamie Sexton is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University. His research interests include cult cinema, independent cinema and film sound and music. He is the co-editor of the book series Cultographies and co-editor (with Ernest Mathijs) of the book Cult Cinema (Blackwell, 2011). Forthcoming publications include a co-edited collection on Chris Morris (with James Leggott), No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris (BFI, 2013).
Stevie Simkin is Reader in Drama and Film in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Winchester, UK. He is the co-editor with Professor Julian Petley of the Controversies series: in-depth studies of key controversial films of the past 40 years. His publications include Straw Dogs (2011) and Basic Instinct (2013) for the series, as well as Early Modern Tragedy and the Cinema of Violence (2005) and three other books on early modern drama. He has also written on UK censorship of film, 1970-75, for Behind the Scenes at the BBFC (2012). He is currently working on Cultural Constructions of the Femme Fatale: from Pandora's Box to Amanda Knox, due in 2013.
Clarissa Smith is Reader in Sexual Cultures at the University of Sunderland, UK. Her research is in the areas of sexuality in contemporary culture; representations of sex and sexuality; identities and the body; pornographies, their production, consumption and regulation; taboo/ controversial media. Her publications include One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Women’s Porn (Intellect, 2007) and the co-editor, with Feona Attwood, of a Sex Education special issue on Sexualisation and Young People (2011).
Janet Staiger is a theoretician and historian of American film and television, who has published on the Hollywood mode of production, the economic history and dynamics of the industry and its technology, poststructural and postfeminist/queer approaches to authorial studies, the historical reception of cinema and television programmes, and cultural issues involving gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. Current work includes methods of cultural analysis (especially questions of genre and groupings of films), representations of gender and sexuality, practices of audiences (particularly fan cultures), and theorization of emotions as well as continuing interests in her traditional areas of research. Major monograph publications include: (with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (1992), Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (1995), (ed.) The Studio System (1995), Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception (2000), Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era (2000), (co-ed. with David Gerstner) Authorship and Film (2003), Media Reception Studies (2005), (co-ed. with Sabine Hake) Convergence Media History (2008), and (co-ed. with Ann Cvetkovich and Ann Reynolds) Political Emotions (2010). She is the William P. Hobby Centennial Professor Emeritus in Communication and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
David Sterritt is chair of the National Society of Film Critics and film studies professor at Columbia University, where he also co-chairs the University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. In addition he is a humanistic studies and art history professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, professor emeritus at Long Island University, contributing editor of Tikkun, contributing writer of Cineaste and MovieMaker, and chief book critic of Film Quarterly. He serves on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal, the Hitchcock Annual, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the Journal of Beat Studies. He is author or editor of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock and The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible (Cambridge University Press), Mad to Be Saved: The Beats, the ‘50s, and Film (Southern Indiana University Press), Terry Gilliam: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi), The B List (Da Capo), Spike Lee’s America (Polity Books, January 2013), The Beats: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, March 2013), and several other books. His writing has appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Journal of American History, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Film-Philosophy.com, and many other publications.
Andrea Torrano is a graduate in Philosophy and in Social Communication, both by National University of Córdoba, Argentina. She is a Ph.D. student of Philosophy at UNC; and she is developing a research project: “The political monster in the societies of control. An ontological consideration of monstrosity”.She specializes in Contemporary Political Thought, specifically in Biopolitics. She is author of articles on monstrosity, technology and relational ontology. She is also interested in cinema and literature.
Jeffrey Weinstock is professor of American literature and culture at Central Michigan University. He is the author of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2007) and Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (2008) and is an editor for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.
Paul Wells is a Professor and Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University. Paul is an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, having published widely in Animation and Film Studies, and written and directed numerous projects for theatre, radio, television and film.His books include Understanding Animation (London: Routledge), Animation and America (Rutgers University Press), The Fundamentals of Animation (Lausanne: AVA),and The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons and Culture (Rutgers University Press). Paul’s text, Scriptwriting (Lausanne: AVA), forms the basis of workshops and consultancies he has conducted worldwide. His continuing professional engagements, include working with writers from The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants, and developing animated shorts, children’s series, documentaries and features in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, and the United States. Spinechillers, Paul’s radio history of the horror film won a Sony Award, while Britannia – The Film was chosen as an Open University set text. His recent TV documentaries on John Coates, Geoff Dunbar, and John Halas – the latter based on his book, Halas & Batchelor Cartoons – An Animated History (London: Southbank Publishing) with Vivien Halas – have been presented at festivals globally. He was also a consultant for the BBC’s Animation Nation.
Feona Attwood is a Professor in the Media Department at Middlesex University, UK. Her research is in the area of sex in contemporary culture; and in particular, in onscenity; sexualization; sexual cultures; new technologies, identity and the body; and controversial media. She is the editor of Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture (2009), porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography (2010) and (with Vincent Campbell, I.Q. Hunter and Sharon Lockyer) Controversial Images (in press) and the co-editor of journal special issues on Controversial Images (with Sharon Lockyer, Popular Communication, 2009), Researching and Teaching Sexually Explicit Media (with I.Q. Hunter, Sexualities, 2009), and Investigating Young People’s Sexual Cultures (with Clarissa Smith, Sex Education, 2011). Her recent publications have focussed on online culture, aesthetics, sex and the media, and public engagement. She is leading an international research network on onscenity, funded by the AHRC and is at the start of an AHRC Fellowship project. Her current book project is Media, Sex and Technology.
Harry M. Benshoff is a Professor of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of North Texas. His research interests include topics in film genres, film history, film theory, and multiculturalism. He has published essays on blaxploitation horror films, Hollywood LSD films, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Twilight (2008). He is the author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester University Press, 1997) and Dark Shadows (Wayne State University Press, 2011). With Sean Griffin he co-authored America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Blackwell, 2004) and Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
Mikita Brottman is a psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic known for her psychological readings of the dark and pathological elements of contemporary culture. Brottman's articles and case studies have appeared in Film Quarterly, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, New Literary History, and American Imago. She has written influentially on horror films, critical theory, reading, psychoanalysis, and the work of the American folklorist, Gershon Legman. She currently teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
Costas Constandinides is Assistant Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Communications at The University of Nicosia. He is the author of From Film Adaptation to Post-celluloid Adaptation: Rethinking the Transition of Popular Narratives and Characters across Old and New Media (New York/London: Continuum, 2010) and he is a contributor to the forthcoming volume Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies in Film and Television (I.B. Tauris). He is currently co-editing a volume on Cypriot Cinema with Yiannis Papadakis for publication by Bloomsbury. He is also a member of the artistic committee of Cyprus Film Days IFF, which is co-organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus and Rialto theatre.
K.J.Donnelly is reader in film at the University of Southampton. He is author of Occult Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2013), British Film Music and Film Musicals (Palgrave, 2008), The Spectre of Sound (BFI, 2006) and Pop Music in British Cinema (BFI, 2001). He is editor of Film Music: Critical Approaches (Edinburgh University Press, 2001) and (with Philip Hayward) Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future (Routledge, 2012).
Thomas H. Green is a writer and journalist for the Daily Telegraph, where he also created and devised the annual Telegraph Festival Guide. Beyond roles at this publication, he also writes for Mixmag, Q Magazine and the artdesk.com (the latter of which he also founded). Thomas H. Green is also the author of the successful book Rock Shrines (Harper & Collins, 2010), as well as being the founder and editor-in-chief for www.beatmag.net between 2005 and 2008.
Ken Gelder is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His books include Reading the Vampire (1994), Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M. Jacobs), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004) and Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007). His book New Vampire Cinema will be published by the British Film Institute in December 2012. He teaches popular genres of fiction, Australian literature, and subcultural studies.
Benjamin Halligan is the Director of Postgraduate Research Studies for the College of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Salford. His publications include Michael Reeves (Manchester University Press, 2003), Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics (Ashgate, 2010; co-edited with Michael Goddard), Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise (Continuum, 2012; co-edited with Michael Goddard and Paul Hegarty), Resonances: Noise and Contemporary Music (Continuum, 2013, co-edited with Michael Goddard and Nicola Spelman) and The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Routledge, 2013; co-edited with Robert Edgar and Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs).
Joan Hawkins is Associate Professor in Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. She has research and publication interests in film, theory, experimental prose and performance and taste cultures. Joan Hawkins’ books include Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), and she is currently completing the volume Burning Down the House: Downtown Film, Video and TV Culture 1975-2001.
Steffen Hantke has written on contemporary literature, film, and culture. He is author of Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary Literature (1994), as well as editor of Horror, a special topics issue of Paradoxa (2002), Horror: Creating and Marketing Fear (2004), Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010), and, with Rudolphus Teeuwen, of Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers, and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labor in Higher Education (2007). His essays and reviews have appeared in Science Fiction Studies, Critique, StoryTelling, Literature/Film Quarterly, and other journals. He teaches in the American Culture Program at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea.
Leon Hunt is Senior Lecturer in Film and TV Studies. He is the author of British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (1998), Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger (2003), the BFI TV Classics volume The League of Gentlemen (2008) and Cult British TV Comedy: From Reeves and Mortimer to Psychoville (forthcoming 2013), and co-editor of East Asian Cinemas: Transnational Connections on Film (2008) and Screening the Undead: Vampires and Zombies on Film (forthcoming 2013). He is the current editor of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.
Mark Jancovich is professor of Film and Television Studies at University of East Anglia. His interests include film, media and cultural theory; genre (particularly horror, pornography and the historical epic); audience and reception studies; and contemporary popular television. He is currently working on a history of American horror in the 1940s. Publications include: The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (with Lucy Faire and Sarah Stubbings) (BFI, 2003); edited with Antonio Lazaro, Julian Stringer, and Andrew Willis, Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste (MUP, 2003); edited with James Lyons, Quality Popular Television: Cult TV, the Industry and Fans (BFI, 2003); edited, Horror: The Film Reader, (Routledge, 2001); edited with Joanne Hollows and Peter Hutchings, The Film Studies Reader (Arnold, 2000); Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s (Manchester University Press, 1996); edited with Joanne Hollows, Approaches to Popular Film (Manchester University Press, 1995); The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Horror (Batsford, 1992).
Jason Lee is Professor and Head of Film and Media with Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Derby, where he runs the MA pathway in Horror and Transgression. He is the author and editor of fifteen books and editor of the journal and book series Transgressive Culture, with work translated into nine languages. Jason Lee’s books include Pervasive Perversions – paedophilia and child sexual abuse in media culture (London: Free Association Books, 2005), and Cultures of Addiction, ed. (New York: Cambria, 2011). His main areas concern key taboo topics, including addiction, madness and abuse in popular culture. His next book is The Psychology of Screenwriting (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
Ernest Mathijs is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is the co-author of 100 Cult Films (2011) and Cult Cinema (2011), and the author of The Cinema of David Cronenberg (2008) and John Fawcett's Ginger Snaps (2013). He is directing research projects on contemporary cult cinema and on digital cinema at the Centre for Cinema Studies at UBC (www.centreforcinemastudies.com)
Alex Marlow-Mann holds a PhD from the University of Reading and is currently Lecturer in European Film at the University of Birmingham. A specialist on Italian cinema, he is the author of The New Neapolitan Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and numerous articles on Italian film genres (musicals, cop thrillers, gothic horror) as well as on contemporary Italian cinema and British and Italian silent cinema.
Patricia MacCormack is Reader in Film Studies at Anglia Ruskin University and has written on a diverse range of issues such as continental philosophy, body modification, performance art, monster theory and European horror film. Patricia MacCormack is the author of Cinesexuality. (Ashgate, 2008) and the co-editor of The Schizoanalysis of Cinema (Continuum. 2008). Her articles have also appeared in journals such as Women: A Cultural Review, Theory, Culture and Society, New Formations and Body and Society. She has published chapters in anthologies such as Queering the Non-Human, Deleuze and Queer Theory, Caligari's Heirs and Zombie Culture which include work on masochism, cinesexuality, horror film and continental theory.
John Mercer is Senior Lecturer in Screen Cultures at The Birmingham School of Media and is a member of The Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. His research interests concern issues of gender and sexuality in popular culture. His primary research interest is in the impact and influence of pornography on gay culture. He is also interested in the relationships between aesthetic and stylistic tropes and emotional affects across media texts but especially in the form often described as melodrama. He has previously published work on gay pornography that has appeared in Paragraph (J. Still, ed), The Journal of Homosexuality, Pornocopia: Eclectic Views on Gay Pornography (T. Morrison, ed) and Framing Celebrity ( S. Redmond and S. Holmes, eds) and Hard to Swallow: Reading Pornography On-Screen (D. Kerr and C. Hines, eds). He is editor of The Journal of Gender Studies, and is the author (with Martin Shingler) of Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility.
Ieuan Morris was born in North Wales, and studied at Central St Martin’s, London and at the School of Film and TV, Royal College of Art. His first films were shown in art galleries in New York, Montreal and the ICA, London. At the London-based Oedipus Productions in the mid-1980s, he produced and directed a number of drama-documentaries for Channel 4 TV and produced music videos for London Records. During this period, he was a visiting lecturer at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. In 1987, he became Training Director at the North East Media Training Centre, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which was awarded the British Film Institute Education Award in 1990. He joined the teaching staff of the University of Glamorgan in 1994. He was awarded a Readership in 2004 and specialises in screenwriting and directing as well as in the study of European and Avant-garde cinema. Concurrently with his academic career, he has further developed his craft as a filmmaker completing numerous award-winning short films and documentaries. He is presently developing a feature-length film with Fragrant Films.
Julian Petley is Professor of Screen Media and Journalism in the School of Arts, Brunel University, Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the board of Index on Censorship. Julian Petley’s recent books include Censorship: a Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld 2009), Film and Video Censorship in Contemporary Britain (Edinburgh University Press 2011).
Jason S Polley is assistant professor of American literature and culture at Hong Kong Baptist University. While completing his PhD at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, he was an instructor at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia; Universidad Espiritu Santo, Guayaquil, Ecuador; and the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. His publications include a chapter on John Banville and maternal property in Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance (2007); a review of District 9 (Jure Gentium 2008); an essay on the Jonathan Franzen-Oprah Winfrey scandal (Magazine Americana 2008); two book-length creative nonfictions--Refrain (2010) and Cemetery Miss You (2011); the book Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo: Narratives of Everyday Justice (2011); and two forthcoming journal articles, one on race theory and justice in Smiley’s The Greenlanders, the other on media studies and Cold War conspiracy theory in Allan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen.
Steven Rybin is an Assistant Professor of Film at Georgia Gwinnett College, near Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is the co-editor, with Will Scheibel, of Going Home: New Essays on Nicholas Ray in Cinema Culture. He is author of Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film and The Cinema of Michael Mann, as well as other articles and book chapters. He blogs at cinephilepapers.blogspot.com.
Jamie Sexton is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University. His research interests include cult cinema, independent cinema and film sound and music. He is the co-editor of the book series Cultographies and co-editor (with Ernest Mathijs) of the book Cult Cinema (Blackwell, 2011). Forthcoming publications include a co-edited collection on Chris Morris (with James Leggott), No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris (BFI, 2013).
Stevie Simkin is Reader in Drama and Film in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Winchester, UK. He is the co-editor with Professor Julian Petley of the Controversies series: in-depth studies of key controversial films of the past 40 years. His publications include Straw Dogs (2011) and Basic Instinct (2013) for the series, as well as Early Modern Tragedy and the Cinema of Violence (2005) and three other books on early modern drama. He has also written on UK censorship of film, 1970-75, for Behind the Scenes at the BBFC (2012). He is currently working on Cultural Constructions of the Femme Fatale: from Pandora's Box to Amanda Knox, due in 2013.
Clarissa Smith is Reader in Sexual Cultures at the University of Sunderland, UK. Her research is in the areas of sexuality in contemporary culture; representations of sex and sexuality; identities and the body; pornographies, their production, consumption and regulation; taboo/ controversial media. Her publications include One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Women’s Porn (Intellect, 2007) and the co-editor, with Feona Attwood, of a Sex Education special issue on Sexualisation and Young People (2011).
Janet Staiger is a theoretician and historian of American film and television, who has published on the Hollywood mode of production, the economic history and dynamics of the industry and its technology, poststructural and postfeminist/queer approaches to authorial studies, the historical reception of cinema and television programmes, and cultural issues involving gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. Current work includes methods of cultural analysis (especially questions of genre and groupings of films), representations of gender and sexuality, practices of audiences (particularly fan cultures), and theorization of emotions as well as continuing interests in her traditional areas of research. Major monograph publications include: (with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985), Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (1992), Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (1995), (ed.) The Studio System (1995), Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception (2000), Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era (2000), (co-ed. with David Gerstner) Authorship and Film (2003), Media Reception Studies (2005), (co-ed. with Sabine Hake) Convergence Media History (2008), and (co-ed. with Ann Cvetkovich and Ann Reynolds) Political Emotions (2010). She is the William P. Hobby Centennial Professor Emeritus in Communication and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
David Sterritt is chair of the National Society of Film Critics and film studies professor at Columbia University, where he also co-chairs the University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. In addition he is a humanistic studies and art history professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, professor emeritus at Long Island University, contributing editor of Tikkun, contributing writer of Cineaste and MovieMaker, and chief book critic of Film Quarterly. He serves on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal, the Hitchcock Annual, the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the Journal of Beat Studies. He is author or editor of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock and The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible (Cambridge University Press), Mad to Be Saved: The Beats, the ‘50s, and Film (Southern Indiana University Press), Terry Gilliam: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi), The B List (Da Capo), Spike Lee’s America (Polity Books, January 2013), The Beats: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, March 2013), and several other books. His writing has appeared in Cahiers du cinéma, the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Journal of American History, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Film-Philosophy.com, and many other publications.
Andrea Torrano is a graduate in Philosophy and in Social Communication, both by National University of Córdoba, Argentina. She is a Ph.D. student of Philosophy at UNC; and she is developing a research project: “The political monster in the societies of control. An ontological consideration of monstrosity”.She specializes in Contemporary Political Thought, specifically in Biopolitics. She is author of articles on monstrosity, technology and relational ontology. She is also interested in cinema and literature.
Jeffrey Weinstock is professor of American literature and culture at Central Michigan University. He is the author of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2007) and Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (2008) and is an editor for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.
Paul Wells is a Professor and Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University. Paul is an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, having published widely in Animation and Film Studies, and written and directed numerous projects for theatre, radio, television and film.His books include Understanding Animation (London: Routledge), Animation and America (Rutgers University Press), The Fundamentals of Animation (Lausanne: AVA),and The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons and Culture (Rutgers University Press). Paul’s text, Scriptwriting (Lausanne: AVA), forms the basis of workshops and consultancies he has conducted worldwide. His continuing professional engagements, include working with writers from The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants, and developing animated shorts, children’s series, documentaries and features in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, and the United States. Spinechillers, Paul’s radio history of the horror film won a Sony Award, while Britannia – The Film was chosen as an Open University set text. His recent TV documentaries on John Coates, Geoff Dunbar, and John Halas – the latter based on his book, Halas & Batchelor Cartoons – An Animated History (London: Southbank Publishing) with Vivien Halas – have been presented at festivals globally. He was also a consultant for the BBC’s Animation Nation.
Peer Review Panel Members Also Included:
Martin Barker was Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth University but also Professor of Film & Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. He had nearly forty years now been involved in research and argument around issues of censorship, moral campaigns, and the kinds of media material which arouse moralists’ wrath. He has researched, among other things, on the 1950s horror comics campaign and the 1980s video nasties campaign, and the Mail’s year-long attempt to get Cronenberg’s Crash banned in the UK. In recent years he had particularly focused on researching the real (as opposed to the hypothetical, supposed) audiences for so-called dangerous films. This culminated in 2006 in him being invited by the BBFC to lead a research project into audience responses to screened sexual violence. He later projects involved a collaborative study of the audiences for online pornography.
Peter Hutchings was Professor of Film Studies at Northumbria University. He was the author of Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film, Terence Fisher, The British Film Guide to Dracula, The Horror Film and The Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema as well as co-editor – with Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich – of The Film Studies Reader. He also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on horror cinema, British film and television, science fiction cinema and television, and the thriller.
Martin Barker was Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth University but also Professor of Film & Television Studies at the University of East Anglia. He had nearly forty years now been involved in research and argument around issues of censorship, moral campaigns, and the kinds of media material which arouse moralists’ wrath. He has researched, among other things, on the 1950s horror comics campaign and the 1980s video nasties campaign, and the Mail’s year-long attempt to get Cronenberg’s Crash banned in the UK. In recent years he had particularly focused on researching the real (as opposed to the hypothetical, supposed) audiences for so-called dangerous films. This culminated in 2006 in him being invited by the BBFC to lead a research project into audience responses to screened sexual violence. He later projects involved a collaborative study of the audiences for online pornography.
Peter Hutchings was Professor of Film Studies at Northumbria University. He was the author of Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film, Terence Fisher, The British Film Guide to Dracula, The Horror Film and The Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema as well as co-editor – with Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich – of The Film Studies Reader. He also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on horror cinema, British film and television, science fiction cinema and television, and the thriller.