[Commlist] Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and Culture online Autumn Talks/Events

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The Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and Culture at the University of 
Wolverhampton warmly invites you to its online Autumn Talks/Events. All 
welcome



→ “Through the Cracks in the Mask: Gender, Race and Queerness in Star Wars”

Wednesday 18th November 2020, 16:00.

Speaker: Dr Rebecca Harrison, Lecturer in Theatre, Film and Television 
Studies, University of Glasgow.

Finn’s iconic appearance as a Black protagonist in The Force Awakens. 
Rey’s heroic dash to save her friends in The Last Jedi. The insinuation 
of a lesbian relationship in The Rise of Skywalker.

Over the past five years, the Disney-helmed Star Wars franchise has 
masked itself in promises of progressive representation and swished the 
cloak of inclusion around its heels. But it has, for the most part, 
failed to deliver. Or has it? Drawing on screen time and other data, and 
analysing the films via feminism, critical race studies and queer 
theory, this talk explores identity in the saga from 1977 to 2019. In 
doing so, it aims to complicate narratives about representation in the 
mainstream press, and to generate discussion about the franchise when 
stripped of its bait-and-switch disguise.

Book via: 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/through-the-cracks-in-the-mask-tickets-120368085183

→ In Conversation with the Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and 
Culture: “How do I go about preparing my work for publication?”

Friday 20th November 2020, 16:00. With Dr Fran Pheasant-Kelly and Dr 
Benjamin Halligan

How do I go about prepping my work for publication? Articles and/or 
books? When should I begin this? How do I do a proposal for a publisher? 
What kind of timeline can I expect? How do I convert a PhD into a book? 
And more! 1 hour session (including Q&A). Contact (b.halligan /at/ wlv.ac.uk) 
for invite.

→ The “Wind of Change” Blows Home: The Servant, Genre Hybridity, and 
Sixties Social Upheaval

Wednesday 2nd December 2020, 17:00. Speaker: Dr Christopher Weedman, 
Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Department of English, Middle 
Tennessee State University

The Servant is considered a landmark of 1960s British cinema. Not only 
did this 1963 film hail Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter as one of British 
cinema’s foremost director-screenwriter teams, but it also firmly 
cemented former matinee idol Dirk Bogarde’s post-Victim (1961) 
reputation as an actor specializing in complex roles of psychological 
and sexual ambiguity. The film’s enigmatic tale of a master-servant 
power struggle is routinely examined through the prism of the new 
British art cinema of the 1960s due to the trademark modernist styles of 
Losey (self-conscious visuals) and Pinter (elliptical dialogue). Yet the 
film’s indebtedness to the popular genre conventions and visual styles 
of Gothic horror and film noir has long been neglected by film critics 
and scholars.

Drawing upon theories of exile and genre, formalist analysis, and 
postwar British cultural history, this talk examines how The Servant 
subversively employs Gothic horror and film noir elements to create a 
darkly satirical portrait of pre-Swinging London, which critiques 
Macmillan-era conservative anxiety about impending social, sexual, and 
political upheaval.

Book via: 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-wind-of-change-blows-home-tickets-122377844427

→ In Conversation with the Centre for Film, Media, Discourse and 
Culture: “Starting your PhD in Film”

Friday 4th December 2020, 16:00. With Dr Fran Pheasant-Kelly and Dr 
Benjamin Halligan

Want some ideas of what you should be up to in that crucial first year? 
What are good objectives for your first year of research? What can be 
usefully achieved in this year? What should you be aiming not to do in 
this year? What kind of online resources are useful? How big should a 
Literature Review be? And more! Contact (b.halligan /at/ wlv.ac.uk) for invite.

→ “Thoughts on Picturing Weather and Climate

Wednesday 9th December 2020, 17:00.

Speaker: Professor John Peters, Maria Rosa Menocal Professor of English 
and of Film and Media Studies, Yale University.

Weather, despite its reputation as fleeting and flighty, is one of the 
most heavily mediated things we know. Via a ramble through some Dutch 
and British landscape paintings and more recent technical images, I will 
explore how pictures have embodied, represented, and brought forth 
weather and climate.

Prof Peters’s books include The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy 
of Elemental Media (2015), Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the 
Liberal Tradition (2005), Mass Communication and American Social Thought 
(2004) and Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication 
(1999).

Book via: 
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/thoughts-on-picturing-weather-and-climate-tickets-124694629995

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