Popular Screen Cultures, Politics, and History

This sub-section contains works from our members that focus on aspects of Politics and History within Popular Screen Cultures. If you would like to pursue a piece of work, please click the underlined text for more information.

Trigger warning: Some of these texts may discuss or analyse sensitive topics.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2020) ‘Gothic Cinema from the 1970s to Now.’ In Hand, R.J., McRoy, J. (ed.) Gothic Film: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 77-86.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2013) ‘Gothic Horror Film, 1960-Present.’ In Byron, G., Townshend, D. (ed.) The Gothic World. London: Routledge, pp. 388-398.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2016) ‘Post-Millennial Horror, 2000-16.’ Horror: A Literary History. London: British Library Publishing, pp. 189-214.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2018) ‘Promethean Myths of the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Frankenstein Film Adaptations and the Rise of the Viral Zombie.’ In Davison, C.M., Mulvey-Roberts, M. (ed.) Global Frankenstein. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 167-182.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2019) ‘Revisiting the Spanish Civil War: An Interview with Patrick McGrath.’ In Foley, M., Duncan, R. (ed.) Patrick McGrath and his Worlds: Madness and the Transnational Gothic. Routledge, pp. 63-69.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2021) ‘Spanish Civil War horror and regional trauma : the politics of painful remembrance in Juan Carlos Medina’s Insensibles (Painless, 2012).’ English Language Notes, 59(2) pp. 20-34.

Aldana Reyes, X. (2018) ‘The Contemporary Gothic’, entry in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature.

Arnold, G. Cookney, D. Fairclough, K. Goddard, M. (2017) Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media. Bloomsbury Academic. 

Aroni, G., 2019. ‘The architecture of Assassin’s Creed II’s Florence: an analysis with the History-Game Relations (HGR) Framework’, Well Played, 8 (1), pp. 13-26.

Carter, M., Paryz, M., Marubbio, M.E. (2020) Figurations of Settler Colonialism in Contemporary Cinematic Depictions of the US West (Special Issue of Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik). Walter de Gruyter.

Carter, M. (2016) ‘‘This Country’s Hard on People’: No Country for Old Men as Political Allegory of 9/11..’ In Gilroy, A., Messmer, M. (ed.) America: Justice, Conflict, War, EAAS 60th Anniversary Conference Volume. Winter Universitätsverlag, pp. 117-129.

Carter, M. (2020) ‘The Perpetuation of Myth: Ideology in Bone Tomahawk.’ Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik: a quarterly of language, literature and culture, 68(1) pp. 21-35.

Chambers, A. (2018) ‘Cyborgs Take Hollywood: Cultural Responses to Possible AI Futures.’ German Academy of Sciences, Halle (Saale)

Chambers, A.C., McCahey, D. (2024) ‘1990s Dinomania: Public and Popular Cultures of Palaeontology from Jurassic Park to Friends.’ Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 49(3-4) pp. 410-423.

Chambers, A. (2024) Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review: a sharper look as the story gets closer to where it all started in the 60s.

Chambers, A.C. (2017) ‘The Evolution of Planet of the Apes: Science, Religion, and 1960s Cinema.’ Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 28(2-3) pp. 107-122.

Chambers, A. (2019) The Fall: unsettling short film captures our fears about Brexit, Trump and an uncertain future.

Chambers, A. (2021) ‘”We’re saving white guys history?”: Women scientists, new and imagined pasts, and narratives of science on screen.’ University of Bournemouth.

Crome, A., McGrath, J. (2013) Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith: Religion and Doctor Who. Darton, Longman and Todd.

Driessen, S., Jones, B., Litherland, B. (2024) ‘From fan citizenship to ‘fanspiracies’: Politics and participatory cultures in times of crisis?.’ Convergence, 30(1) pp. 304-312.

Driessen, S., Jones, B., Litherland, B. (2025) Participatory Culture Wars Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom. 

Fairclough, K and Wood, J. Pop Stars on Film: Popular Culture in a Global Market. Bloomsbury (2022)

Fhlainn, S.N. (2022) ‘‘I have to return some videotapes’: the long 1980s and horror culture.’ Horror Studies, 13(2) pp. 155-160.

Herrero, C. (2022) ‘Memory and affective discourses in Pepe Mujica, Lessons from the Flowerbed (Heidi Specogna, 2015) and El Pepe: A Supreme Life (Emir Kusturica, 2018).’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 28(1) pp. 67-79.

Litherland, B., Georgiou, D. (2017) Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries Historical Perspectives. Routledge.

Litherland, B. (2021) ‘Ludosity, Radical Contextualism, and a New Games History: Pleasure, Truth, and Deception in the Mid-20th-Century London Arcade.’ Games and Culture, 16(2) pp. 139-159.

McNally, K. Marcellus, J. Forde, T. Fairclough, K. (eds.) The Legacy of Mad Men: Cultural History, Intermediality and American Television. Palgrave (2020)

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2011) ‘All Dark Inside: Dehumanisation and Zombification in Postmodern Cinema’ in D. Christie and S. Juliet Lauro (eds), Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. Fordham University Press, pp. 139-159. 

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2022) ‘A Rift between Worlds: The Retro- 1980s and the Neoliberal Upside Down in Stranger Things’, Gothic Studies, 24(2), pp. 201-218. 

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2017) ‘A Very Special Vampire Episode: vampires, archetypes, and postmodern turns in late-1980s and 90s cult TV shows’, Horror Studies, 8 (2), pp. 255-274. 

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2012) ‘“Bad Science, Hybridity and ‘Eating Machines’: Postmodern Vampirism, Evolution, and the Presidency of George W. Bush”..’ In Vampire(s) & Science: a one-day trans-disciplinary conference marking the centenary of Bram Stoker’s death. Dublin, Ireland, 20/4/2012 – 20/4/2012.

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2007) ‘“It’s Morning in America’: The Lost Boys as a Musical Metaphor for the Religious Right and the Deserved Death of the 1980s Vampire”.’ In Scott, N. (ed.) The Role of the Monster: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Oxford: The Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp. 143-155. 

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2021) Merry 80s Christmas. [Exhibition] HOME, Manchester, 11/12/2021 – 23/12/2021.

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2018) ‘‘Sparkles and Sinew: The political afterlife of the 21st century vampire.’.’ In British Association of Film, Television, and Screen Studies Conference.. University of Kent, 12/4/2018 – 13/4/2018.

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2006) ‘“1976: The Duality in Postmodern Vampiric Identity and Evil in George A Romero’s Martin and Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire.”.’ In Ni Fhlainn, S., Myers, W. (ed.) The Wicked Heart: Studies in the Phenomena of Evil.. Oxford: The Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp. 171-181.

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2011) ‘Wait till they get a load of me!’: The Joker from Modern to Postmodern Villainous S/Laughter’ in  A. Fahraeus and D. Yakalı-Çamoğlu (eds), Villains and Villainy. Brill, pp. 69-92. 

Ní Fhlainn, S. (2021) ‘What Happens to Us in the Future?’: Stranger Things 3 Goes Back to the Future (1985)’, in L. Scott and T. Mollet (eds), Investigating Stranger Things. Palgrave Macmillan Cham, pp. 111-131.

Phillips, T., Warden, C., Litherland, B. (2020) ‘Is this progress? Punk, participation and the (potential) radical politics of British professional wrestling.’ Professional Wrestling Politics and Populism. Enactments,

Reyes, X.A., Rødtjer, R. (2020) ‘The Gothic in Nineteenth-Century Spain.’ The Cambridge History of the Gothic. Cambridge University Press, pp. 285-302.

Reyes, X.A. (2013) ‘Violence and Mediation: The Ethics of Spectatorship in the Twenty-First Century Horror Film.’ Violence and the Limits of Representation. Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 145-160.

Suarez, M. (2019) ‘Book review: Immigration Cinema in the New Europe.’ Studies in European Cinema, 19(1) pp. 75-77.

Suarez, M.F., Herrero, C. (2020) ‘Globalisation and Coloniality of Power in También la lluvia / Even the Rain (2010): Exploring Resistance and Indigenous Empowerment.’ Ottawa Hispanic Studies, 28pp. 133-154.

Suarez, Marta F. (2021) “Recovering memory, reasserting Europeaness. Modern Convivencia and Hispanotropicalism in Palm Trees in the Snow (2015) and Neckan (2015)” in Gergely, Gabor and Hayward, Susan (eds.) Routledge Companion to European Cinema (2021).

Suarez, M. (2022) Reimagining Spain in Times of Crisis: Articulating Nation Through the Latin American and African Other in Contemporary Spanish Film (2005-2015).

Suarez, M.F. (2021) “This is not Paradise and the Journey Was not Worth it: Globalisation, Financial Crisis and the Portrayal of the Sub-Saharan Immigrant in Two Spanish Films” in Wallenbrock, B. and Jacob, G. (eds.) Migrants’ Perspectives, Migrants in Perspective: Human Displacement in 21st Century Film, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 161-185

Wester, M., Reyes, X.A. (2019) ‘Introduction: The Gothic in the Twenty-First Century.’ Twenty First Century Gothic an Edinburgh Companion, pp. 1-16.

Wood, R., Litherland, B. (2018) ‘Critical feminist hope: the encounter of neoliberalism and popular feminism in WWE 24: Women’s Evolution.’ Feminist Media Studies, 18(5) pp. 905-922.