Bruce Bennett - 51福利

Professor Bruce Bennett

Professor in Film Studies

Current Teaching

POSTGRADUATE (PhD)

I am currently co-supervising the following PhD projects:

Areej Alghamdi, Saudi Women's Incorporeal Heritage
Ian Hunt, Cinema and memory
Johnathan Ilott, Cinema and the afterlife
Vicky James, The Migrant Mime - Documentary film and migrant identity
Mingkuo Li, Rebellious Youth Culture in East Asian Cinema, from the 1990s to the present
Rui Qian, Migrant workers in post-'90s Chinese cinema

I have supervised PhDs on a variety of topics including: TV movies, stardom, fanfiction, media culture and the British monarchy, film spectatorship, women's cinema, experimental film and video, science fiction, British and international cinema. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss ideas for a PhD project.

I also lecture on a number of modules on the MA and BA in Film Studies.

POSTGRADUATE (MA)

I contribute lectures to the following modules on the MA in Film Studies, Transnational Cinemas (LICA441) and Research Methods: Contemporary Film Theory (LICA440), Silent Cinema (LICA444), Women Film-makers (LICA449). I also supervise MA dissertations, including dissertations that combine practical film-making with theoretical study.

UNDERGRADUATE

I lead the second-year option module, Women Film-makers (LICA258), and the third-year option module, Silent Cinema (LICA355). I also leadthe first-year core module, British Cinema (LICA102), and the 1st-year Film Studies core module, Introduction to Film Studies (LICA150). I also contribute lectures to the 2nd-year core module, Global Cinemas: Forms, Debates, Histories (LICA251).

I supervise undergraduate dissertations on a variety of topics, including dissertations that combine film practice with theory.

Current Research

BOOKS

Forthcoming publication:

Refugee Cinema (Oxford University Press).

I have been commisioned by OUP to co-write a book on refugee cinema with my regular co-author Prof Katarzyna Marciniak (Occident college, USA). This is currently in process and due for publication shortly.

Recent publications:

I was invited in 2020 to contribute a chapter on cycling and cinema to this comprehensive overview of research on all aspects of cycling and cycling cultures, edited by Glen Norcliffe and Nicholas Oddy. This substantial book was published in December 2022.

Cycling and Cinema (Goldsmiths Press/MIT, 2019)

This innovative book is a cultural history of cycling in global cinema and new screen cultures, considering the cultural significance of the bicycle and the practice of cycling as, variously, leisure activity, transportation device, professional sports apparatus, consumer good, a means of creative expression and a means of protest.

I was awarded a 12-month Research Fellowship by the to undertake this project. The project is outlined in more detail in the Leverhulme Trust from May 2015.

A blog on the project can be found , and the book can be ordered .

An edited excerpt from the introduction to the book, 'Cinema and Cycling, Technological Twins' is published in the MIT Press journal .

'The fine art of cycling: bicycles, modernity and political art'

I contributed a chapter on the history of bicycles in modern art to the collection, Cycling Societies: Emerging Innovations, Inequalities and Governance, edited by Cosmin Popan, Katerina Psarikidou and Dennis Zuev. Using Ai Weiwei and Rainer Ganahl as the principal case studies, this piece asks why the bicycle has been such a fascinating subject for experimental artists and how their work invites us to think differently about cycling and society.

Details about this can be found .

JOURNALS

This article, co-written with Katarzyna Marciniak, examines the representation of refugees as absent or spectral figures in four recent films, and proposes that the most interesting refugee cinema is characterised by a distinctive aesthetic system. This was published as an open access article by Third Text journal in October.

'Close Encounters with Foreignness' (2019)

My regular collaborator and co-writer Katarzyna Marciniak and I were asked, along with a number of other scholars in the field, to submit an article for the 10th anniversary issue of Transnational Cinemas journal, reflecting upon the state of transnational film studies. Our article, which is organized around an analysis of Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War (2018), was published in April and can be found .

'Aporias of Foreignness: Transnational Encounters in Cinema' (2018)

With Katarzyna Marciniak, I recently edited a suite of articles for a special issue of the journal Transnational Cinemas entitled 'Aporias of Foreignness' (vol. 9, no. 1, 2018). My contribution examines the issue of mobile-phone footage, new media and self-representation in film and TV documentaries dealing with the Mediterranean refugee crisis. Details of my article and the special issue can be found .

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in working with students in any area of cinema, film studies, screen studies or visual culture, but have particular interests in: Hollywood cinema, British cinema, Transnational cinema, Early cinema, Film, politics and class, cinema technology, Visual culture, cycling and cycling cultures, Migration studies and cinema.

01/04/2022 → 31/03/2026
Research

Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar