Below are a small sample of our current and recent postgraduate students and the research they have undertaken.
Hannah Merry
I completed my BA and MRes in American Studies at Keele University where I chose to specialise in Literature and Film Studies. I wrote my MRes dissertation on the ideological implications of the representation of bisexual women on American television, concentrating on the character of Remy "Thirteen" Hadley in 'House, M.D.' The working title of my PhD is "In-Visibility: Transgender Representation in Queer Films." I want to examine the difference between mainstream representations of transgender people (which have been largely negative and stereotypical) and the ways that transgender people are represented within queer films.
Caitlin Griffiths
I am a visual artist and freelance curator with specific interests in photography and film and video work. In 2006 I obtained an MPhil at the University of Birmingham in representations of identity in the art work of Isaac Julien & Steve McQueen. I am currently in the first year of a part-time PhD where I will be undertaking a survey of self-representation in contemporary artists' moving image work and examining it through a queer-theory framework.
Katie Barnett
I am currently in the first year of my PhD, studying part-time. In 2007 I graduated from the University of Hull with a BA in American Studies, including a year spent studying at UNC-Greensboro in the US. The following year completed my MA in the American Studies department at the University of East Anglia with a dissertation on lone fatherhood in film. My research interests lie primarily in the area of film studies and the portrayal of men in Hollywood over the last three decades. My PhD research is focused on masculinity and fatherhood in Hollywood films (primarily throughout the 1990s), with a specific interest in the increased portrayal of divorced fathers and the changing concepts of fatherhood in US society during this time period.
John Horne
John talks about his research into representations of dying in contemporary visual culture.
Previous students
Mark Straw
Damaged Men: Trauma, masculinity and victimhood in the contemporary Hollywood war films. My undergraduate degree was in English at the University of Leeds, and I have also successfully completed an MPhil (B) in American Literature and Film at the University of Birmingham. My PhD examines the depiction of traumatised masculinity in post-1990 war films. Through this analysis I aim to demonstrate the ways in which both collective and personal trauma are figured as masochistic, and how this masochism is used to mask the notions of exceptionalism and imperial belligerence on which US national identity is predicated. Wider Research Interests: I am generally interested in 'race' and masculinity in contemporary film, and Hollywood film as a form of neo-imperial public diplomacy. In the future I intend to pursue a burdgeoning interest in Australian cinema and Native American cinema.
Michael Burns
Michaels work centres on film and US foreign policy. 2004 saw the release of his second feature-length documentary entitled Preventive Warriors, an in-depth examination of the White House's National Security Strategy document of 2002 (www.preventivewarriors.com ). His most recent project is Majority Rules, a five-part educational series on democracy as seen through the eyes of students in in six cities in six countries (www.majorityrulesmovie.com ).
Maria Ryan
Her doctoral dissertation examines the evolution of the neoconservative-led political and intellectual network of the 1990s, its interaction with the state and its contribution to post-Cold War 'grand strategy'. She also has a strong interest in the CIA, intelligence and policy-making and has published several articles examining historical and contemporary manifestations of the relationship between neoconservative networks and intelligence analysis. Her first article, in Winter 2002, was one of the first scholarly articles to argue that the Bush administration's pronouncements on Iraq were not matched by the existing CIA intelligence and that the administration was motivated by pre-existing policy preferences.
Paul Woolfe
After several years developing and making broadcast television programmes, Paul returned to academia and completed a Masters by research, writing about Victorian detective fiction. He has since published articles on Hollywood adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe (for a Cambridge University Press collection), images of America in Wilkie Collins, and the influence of American writer Anna Katherine Green on Arthur Conan Doyle. He’s am currently completing his PhD, which analyses 19th-century novels that feature Anglo-American love affairs and marriages; this is as a means of examining the transatlantic relationship and the politics of love stories. As well as articles on literature, he’s also published on American reality TV and the series '24.'
Kaeten Mistry
After completing an undergraduate degree at Birmingham specialising in US foreign policy, Kaeten remained in the department to pursue his PhD. His undergraduate dissertation focused on US policy linkage between Cuba and Germany during the Kennedy Administration, and his doctoral research considers American intervention in the 1948 Italian Elections and the development of a “political warfare” campaign, particular attention to clandestine initiatives, during the formative years of the Cold War. Kaeten’s general research areas include US foreign policy, Intelligence Services, and the interaction of diplomacy, politics, propaganda, ideology, and covert operations within international relations.
Eva Rus
Eva's PhD research concerns the analysis of issues of subjectivity and identity as articulated in contemporary feminist autobiographical practice in both written text and the visual arts. Eva completed her undergraduate degree in Anglo-American Language and Literature with German language and Germanic Philology at the University of Padua, Italy, with a dissertation entitled "A Passion for the Possible: American Feminist Utopianism in the 1970s". Eva’s current research interests include science fiction and utopianism, but also contemporary photography, autobiography and video installation as means of feminist expression and self-representation.